Slim
by LoweFantasy
Summary: Sequel to White, but can be read on its own. Mai and Naru have a blissful honeymoon planned with no haunting, no ghosts, no tales of murder, and definitely no monsters. But things can only go so good for so long, and this time they are without Naru's trusted tech or any of their friends. They're on their own, and there's no promise of a happily ever after.
1. Prologue

**In commemoration of the publishing of my book, "Erase Me," I give you the next book in the...whatever series this is. ^.^ I hope you guys enjoy it! Same old promises-an update at least once a week and the usual Ghost Hunt awesomeness.**

 **For more info on my book, check out my profile! I'm quite proud of "Erase Me" and am so lucky to be able to have it finally released and available for everyone to read.**

Slim

By LoweFantasy

Prologue

I forgave Naru for holding the blankest face known to mankind while I walked up the isle, because when John asked him the question, a heartbreaking smile prodded through, one that could have been too intimate for the rows of onlookers. All our friends, family, and even a splattering of old SPR clients, filled the benches of the chapel. It was the very same chapel where we had solved the case of the mute ghost for Christmas so many years ago.

"I do."

Yeah, I was more or less melting in my heels and trying not to scream in excitement.

John turned to me with a soft smile. Though it had been agreed from the start of our engagement that he would be the initiator of our ceremony, I was still surprised when he showed up all the way from Australia, dressed in his ceremonial robes and ready with a whole speech of pre-vowing marital advice to give us that didn't include "screw this up and I'll shoot you, Naru."

Heh heh…heh…yeah, I thought it was funny.

"Mai Taniyama, do you take Oliver Davis to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, through sickness and health, until death do you part?"

I thought about taking some time to answer this, just to screw with Naru for not looking all goo goo when he first saw me in my wedding dress coming towards him all, you know, wed-able, but he still had that smile on his face that was all Naru, not a flick of Gene, and so handsome it should be illegal.

For what had to be the billionth time that morning, I wondered why I wasn't more nervous. I had always heard about the pre-wedding jitters and brides or groom running for it, but I couldn't fathom what I should be so afraid of. I wanted to spend my life with Naru, and since there was only one of those, it wasn't like I'd be missing out on anything. I was getting exactly what I want—with a cake and a big pretty Victorian dress made of soft cotton.

Which was why no one had been able to talk to me the entire time they had been dolling me up and tying up my dress. I had been too busy squealing.

"I do."

It should have been impossible, but Naru somehow managed to make his smile even more happy. He actually started to show all his teeth and crinkle up his eyes.

"Then by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride."

It was a good thing Naru didn't hesitate on drawing in to kiss me. Not because I would have been offended, but because I could feel another squeal coming on, which might have ruined the whole reverent mood.

A general applause issued, spiked with cheers and other obnoxious noises from Monk and Yasu, who defied any attempts on Ayako's part to quiet them. I pulled away from Naru and opened my eyes to find John beaming like the angel he was. He turned to Naru, his hand outstretched.

"You take care of her, Oliver."

Naru shook John's hand firmly, but he didn't seem able to say anything. Just smiled. Lin, who Naru had picked out as his best man, mirrored that same smile.

The congregation was throwing flower petals and rice as we walked back down the aisle, hand in hand. We made our way out of the chapel, followed by wedding goers, back outside where a small red Toyota that had been rented for the occasion waited for us. Yasu and Takigawa must have snuck out some time before the ceremony, because they had dressed up the car according to tradition: streamers trailed behind it and a white substance of sorts had been used to write 'Just Married' on the back.

I'd always heard stories of weddings not going to plan, but this? This was movie perfect. The reception had been planned for the next week, after Naru and I had had our honeymoon, where much eating and merry making would be had.

More congratulations and cheers were given as Naru opened up the passenger side of the car for me and helped me load up all my skirts in. I was happy that I had picked a comfortable design in my wedding dress that I could travel in, because we had a three hour trip ahead of us and I wasn't much into the idea of Naru's first sight of me naked being while I was trying to strip out of my wedding dress in a tiny car on the freeway.

While I pulled in the last of my skirts, I noticed some strange square foil packets on the floor that hadn't been there before. They diverted my attention from my delirious happiness as Naru made his way to the driver's side, where I found more of them. The weird little packets were everywhere, and whatever was inside had a curious 'O' shape.

Then I caught the mirroring grins on Yasu's, Ayako's, and Takigawa's faces. They had managed to find an angle where they could see us through the car windshield and avoid the majority of the crowd. Lin stood behind them like a stone faced chaperone for a bunch of unruly children.

A familiar heat from the night before rushed up to my face. Naru closed the door behind him right as I gave a groan.

"What is it?" Then he noticed the foils. It was hard not to, as they had been sprinkled across the dashboard—oh god, the dashboard, where everyone could see.

I could see those three roaring with laughter as I started swiping foil packets off the dashboard as fast as I could. Naru's happy smile had vanished to be replaced with an all too familiar glare that he aimed over the steering wheel at our co-workers.

"Did they have to put them where everyone would see?" I asked, just to realize that the SPR members weren't the only ones laughing. Several in the crowd were as well, along with, to my utmost dismay, Naru's usually taciturn father. I sunk down, hoping the poof of my skirts would hide me.

"I thought they were done with us after last night," he muttered as he started the car.

"Ugh, last night," I moaned, sinking further.

"Seat belt, Mai."

I didn't feel like it at all, but clicked it on just in case he decided to sit there in front of the chapel until I did.

Last night had included being ambushed by Yasu, Takigawa, and Ayako, who then split Naru and I apart for last minute 'bachelor' and 'bachelorette' parties. I hadn't bothered with planning one of my own because, ever since graduating, I hadn't bothered keeping in contact with my old high school friends, and since the idea of inviting Naru's mother to something famous for lewdness made me writhe with real horror, I figured a night perfecting my pedicure would do just fine.

Obviously, Ayako didn't think so, as she proceeded to take me to a red-light district, where I managed to persuade her against the host club and male strip shows for the kinky sex shop, because Ayako was insistent on 'educating' me. Apparently that was the real purpose to bachelorette parties. Silly me, I had thought they were for humiliating the bride-to-be till she gave up on being a part of society forever more.

Luckily, she allowed me to escape with only a pair of fuzzy hand-cuffs, a sexy perfume, and a strawberry dildo sucker, which I threw somewhere into my bag like the monstrosity it was and didn't bother to watch where it landed. I would have thrown it into one of the boxes holding my belongings for the move to Naru's, but I had taped up the last of them that morning. Why I didn't throw it away was because the price of it had made me cringe, as Ayako had planned. She knew I wouldn't be able to throw it away if she spent enough money on it. Ugh, my poor-sprung weaknesses, why!?

Naru relayed to me a similar story of humiliation over the phone, though it had only taken one death threat for them to simply take him to the bar, where Naru watched them get wasted while sipping a light wine like the posh Britain he was. I was very envious. Watching Yasu and Takigawa do drunk karaoke could beat dildo suckers any day. Or was it technically a penis sucker? Oh, whatever.

My elation returned soon enough once we left the chapel, and its mischievous condom-bombing cohorts, behind.

I plucked up a few of the condom packets to read the brand names and warnings on them idly. "So, Naru. Have any idea how to use these?"

In answer, Naru scooped up the condom packets laid out behind the steering wheel, where the speedometer and fuel gauge were, and tossed them into the backseat. I laughed at the color in his face.

"I've never used them in my life, but the mechanics are at a level even monkey's could understand," he said with a haughty sniff.

"Well, you know I started the pill a month ago, so you needn't have to."

His color was rising, but now that we were married, his old excuse wasn't around to defend him anymore. He stole a quick glance at me and made a weird little noise in his throat that actually started to make me concerned.

"Are you okay?"

The corner of his mouth twitched and I caught his eyes doing the shift—that quick flick to the side then back when he was forcing himself not to look nervous and failing—and laughed again.

"I love you, Naru."

"And you're…you're beautiful, Mai."

"You don't have to whisper it like that."

"I do." And he even raised his voice a bit so I could hear the emotion, so unlike him that it stilled my laughter. "Otherwise I might do something very unseemly…"

"Is that why you didn't even react when you first saw me? I was offended by that, you know. You could have managed to look blown away by my beauty on my wedding day."

He gave me a weird, quivering sort of smile. "I apologize."

And since I was afraid he might cry, I started ninja chucking condom packets at him until he barked at me to behave myself and try not to get us killed while he was driving.


	2. Crash and Room

**No, there is no lemon/sex scene in this chapter. I don't write sex scenes. Just implied sex-because it happens. If you think I get too close to the edge, though, please let me know. It can be a tricky slope when you're trying to write realistically.**

Chapter 1

Being the orphan that I was, I didn't have any family camping trips or could afford school outings to give me an excuse to visit the woods. Naru, being the workaholic that he was, organizing a work camping trip would have been like expecting John to organize a sorority frat party. All our cases had to do with homes or other buildings, so no mother nature there. The closest we got to anywhere 'wild' was on visits to particular shrines during investigations. With Naru out of the picture, there was Yasu, who was busy with school, Ayako and Takigawa had been particularly offline since they had hitched up about the same time Naru and I had, and Masako and Lin…yeah.

Which was why I rolled down the window and stuck my head out like a happy dog the moment the city vanished and trees swallowed us whole. My veil was safe inside, but my perfectly curled hair went ballistic. An hour of careful preening gone within seconds.

"This smells amazing!" I crowed.

Naru tugged me back down by the big white bow on my rump. "You're going to get your head swiped off."

I pouted at him. "No I won't. They just tell kids that so they won't do it."

"Gee, I wonder why."

So I compromised and stuck out my hand instead and had fun experimenting with the slip stream of air by sticking my fingers out flat like a duck bill or spread out like a parachute. Occasionally I'd make airplane noises and quiet 'ahhhs!' as though little people were being blown out my nails just so I could see Naru's cheek bunch up with a smile.

My fun came to an end when the autumn evening air started making my fingers go numb. Naru flicked on the heater as soon as I had the window up as well as some classical music I remembered him playing on occasion in the office. I didn't mind. I liked it. He had good taste. Though I was basically cool with any music as long as it wasn't American Country gone Christmas.

I always liked the smoothing effect night had on road trips. Colors dulled and angles softened till it was just the glow of the car console and the oncoming stars of other cars and streetlights. I slipped off my shoes and propped them up on the dashboard as I enjoyed my own contentment. Occasionally I'd strike up an idle conversation with Naru, but mostly I kept my eye on the signs. We had picked out an out of the way, small hot spring hotel for our honeymoon. On normal occasions we wouldn't be able to afford it, as one of its selling points was having limited number of rooms. But, yay, Naru's parents were loaded.

I also couldn't remember the last time I'd been to a hot spring.

When our trip finally started to take us onto side roads and the starlight of cars all but vanished, I put my feet down and hopped in place with little poofs of skirt. Some of it went flying onto Naru's lap.

"Calm down," he said, though he didn't sound that committed to his command.

"But I'm so excited!"

"What for? It's just a hot spring. And it can't be your excited for—"

Something flashed up in the headlights, tall, tall—a man, hunched and long.

Naru swerved. The tires squealed. I clung to the seat belt. Trees flash and spun and the force shoved me into the back of my seat—

And then it all stopped. Dirt clouded up the view in the headlights and Naru's fingers had gone impossibly white on the steering wheel.

"Mai? You alright?"

"Are they okay?"

"Mai—"

"Of course I'm fine—damn it, where are my shoes? Oooh, please, please let us not have killed someone!"

"Stay. I'll check."

I took up wide swathes of my dress to clench as he got out and closed the door behind him. He came out stark and strange in the dusty headlights wearing his white dress shirt and tux pants. When he vanished from view and into the darkness, I started digging through skirts to find my shoes again. I didn't know what use I'd be in heels, but I couldn't leave him alone to whatever was out there. Something unnerved me. An old instinct I had grown to respect curled restlessly in the pit of my stomach.

Just as I had my shoes on and my hand on the handle, Naru opened the door and fell back in.

"Nothing," he said, snapping in his belt.

"What?"

"There was nothing. Whoever they were, they were well enough to run off. I don't think we hit them anyways, we would have felt it."

"But he was right there in our faces. There's no way someone could just…dodge that."

Naru just twisted around to see out the back window as he reversed us out from the shrubbery and back onto the road. The branches of the trees that had managed to stretch through the dust reluctantly let us go and soon the black tarp was back beneath the wheels.

I found my hands sweating and twisted them in my skirts once more. "I've got an uneasy feeling."

"Natural or otherwise?"

"I think it's otherwise."

"Do you think we should call the cops when we get to the hotel? We're almost there, and even if we found them we're poorly equipped to help."

"No, I…" I glanced back out the window. The night that had once been charming to me now seemed just dark, and I couldn't help but wonder what was beyond the tree trunks. I regretted saying anything to Naru, who was likely to worry in quiet over it. "It's probably nothing. Yeah, we'll tell someone. I didn't think there'd be any homeless up here."

Naru snorted. "Those kinds of people are everywhere. It was most likely some, what do the American's call them, hippies? Ate one too many mushrooms and happened to cart across the street as we were passing."

Comforted by this thought, I all but forgot about the incident by the time we rolled up to the hotel. It looked just as it had in the pictures: a traditional Japanese bathhouse tucked away in the woods. On walking in with our bags over Naru's shoulders, every eye in the room turned to stare. It didn't last long as a man wearing what looked to be the hotel's uniform shirt offered to take the bags from Naru and a lady at the desk came around like a chittering bird getting busy to make the nest.

"Don't tell me, you must be the Davis's! Please, right this way. Our best suite is already prepared."

Naru told her about the man we almost hit and she promised to call the authorities on it before leading us away, followed by more employees than I thought necessary to show someone to a room. My excitement was being dampened by this attention. Even after being exposed to the Davis's money for the past few months, seeing the evidence of it still gave me the urge to crawl into a thrift store somewhere so I could breathe reasonable air. And always, the thought would burst in 'how many months of utilities and food could I get with this?'

The suite didn't help. It wasn't a hotel room, it was a freaking apartment done in the old Japanese world style, sliding doors, low setting furniture, water paint artwork and all.

She asked when we would like to have dinner, Naru gave her a time, and then, indicating a map and other brochure like instructions on the dark wood table in the middle of some sofas, the lot of them actually bowed and backed out of the doors like that—as though we were some shogun or feudal era lord.

The moment the door was closed and he saw my face, he laughed. I put my fingers to my cheeks to feel an all too familiar gawk and was confused. What was so funny? He'd seen this look plenty of times.

"Really, Mai," he reached out and tugged on a messy curl of my hair. "You shouldn't have stuck your head out the window."

"Ha. Give me that bag, I'm getting out of this dress."

He handed it to me, something twitching at the hinge of his jaw. "Do you need help reaching the zipper?"

"It's not a zipper, it's some sort of lace-up-tie thing, but yeah." I turned around and pulled back my hair. "Try to be quick." Because I had to pee, bad. Rule number one of road trips: once you reached your destination, you always had to pee. Like gravity itself.

Once he undid my dress, he barely had the time to brush his fingers across my bare shoulder before I flounced off to the bathroom, where I locked the door and peeled out of my gossamer wedding gown. Only once I'd gotten to my porcelain throne did I take the time to appreciate the opulent bathroom. Polished slate lined the walls and floor, and the shower doors were made of clear glass with gold handles. Three showerheads all faced one another from their individual walls, and a dark slate counter held up two sinks.

In the wide mirrors above the sinks I got sight of what it was Naru was laughing at, and blanched. Hairspray, curls, and seventy-mile-per-hour winds made a nest. I might as well have tried to lose my virginity to a ravenous wolf-like groom in our tiny rented Toyota for all those poor hot spring workers knew.

My reflection now blushing like a cherry, I groaned and bent myself over the sink.

There was a knock at the door. "You done yet? I need to use the restroom."

"Yeah, just give me a moment."

Figuring I could take a shower once Naru had finished with his own business, I got out my PJs, not even bothering with the silky lace thing Naru had gotten me when I had demanded he replace a pair of pajama bottoms that had gotten ruined on a case. I was so not in the mood to try and be sexy.

He had the gall to chuckle when I came out with an arm thrown over my head.

"It's not that bad."

In response I glared. "Just go pee already. I'm going to find me a spring to drown in."

He gave my arm a squeeze before closing the bathroom door behind him. I went to the tables to pick up a brochure, suddenly feeling all the fatigue and hunger that my euphoria had kept from my mind. I only read the first few sentences before I gave up on that idea and tried to remember what time Naru had asked for dinner. I remembered that I thought it was rather late, like…an hour or so from now?

When I heard the shower turn on from within the bathroom, I wilted.

"That was my idea," I grumbled, letting my bag slip from my shoulder. Then, staring at the open purple canvas, a piece of that silky lace sticking out from the zipper mouth, a tentative idea came to my mind. I checked the windows as though the crazy hobo we'd almost hit would have his face stuck against the glass. Sure there were no hobos, just the haze of steam and wood walls (wait, did we have our own personal spring?), I eased off my pajamas and underwear with shaking hands. With my skin prickling with goose flesh, I went to the bathroom. The moment I realized I hadn't thought to see if he had locked the door or not, the door slid open.

In the short time the shower had been on the bathroom had filled with steam. Naru was turned from me, his head bowed into the triple streams of water, scrubbing out suds from his hair. It was the strangest of thrills to trace the pale curves and lines of his backside, knowing that I was allowed to it—even welcomed to it. He was mine.

The crashing water over his head hid the sound of the bathroom door closing and the whisper of the shower's glass door. Since there were three shower heads, facing one another or not, I was able to get my head under the water before he even realized I was there.

He didn't turn around right away. I could see his shoulders doing the see-saw little twitch they did when he was nervous. I tried not to look it myself as I flattened as much of the curly-wind-hazard of my hair as I could.

"Sorry, I just can't stand the idea of anyone seeing my hair like this again," I said, a little too quickly. "Once I'm done washing my hair I can get out."

"No, it's fine." He even stepped away a bit to give me some room, shoulders continuing to move as though to hunch, then being refused by his pride and falling down. "Can…can I turn around?"

I considered telling him no, suddenly afraid of what he'd think. What if there was something weird about my body? It wasn't like I'd know, I thought girls were gross to look at—or, at least, not, you know…attractive. Not like the smooth hills of his back muscles and broad shoulders that promised to curl a chest about me. Or how long and lean his legs were without having to sacrifice said muscle—and every muscle promised strength, of tight embraces, of something…something I couldn't yet explain.

But it was going to happen eventually. "If you give me the shampoo, yes."

He picked up the bottle from somewhere by his feet and turned, handing it to me. No one's eyes burned as much as his did as they scanned me from toe to head in the second it took me to take the shampoo from him. I caught a glimpse of his front as well and found myself somewhat disgusted by his own hidden part and busied myself with lathering up my hair to ignore it. I knew guys' parts had that general shape but I didn't think it would—

Naru suddenly dropped to his haunches, knees pinched together, face hidden in his arms.

I flinched and got lavender scented suds in my eyes. Ahck! Owie owie owie.

"Naru? What's wrong?"

When he didn't respond, I started to feel alarmed. I had never—he had never done anything like this before, nor could I even see him doing so. It was almost as though he were trying to hide—oh no, did he see me and was disgusted too? Did he somehow read my mind when I saw his…bit? Did he—

Afraid I might just flee the bathroom bawling, I crouched down too. "I-am I that gross?"

His had snapped up. "No!" On seeing my face, his head hunched back. Trickles of soapy water ran along the valleys of his face, creating little waterfalls off his long lashes. His dark blue eyes shivered as they jumped over my features, my hair, my shoulders, and then to his knees. "No, no, don't ever—you're beautiful. So beautiful."

A hot, liquid feeling curled up my back and pooled in my pelvis and thighs. I cocked my head to the side, frowning. "Then what's with…?"

His chin ducked lower and I couldn't make out his eyes behind his lashes and their waterfalls. He almost seemed to be trying to hug himself into the smallest ball possible. I couldn't help myself from reaching out to touch one of the round rivets of his shoulder and bicep.

"I don't know what to do," he whispered. I almost didn't hear him above the noise of the crashing water. "You're so beautiful, and I just…I don't know what to do."

His voice actually pitched at the end, growing into a child-like whine. No one would ever hear this. No one would even think that the proud, intelligent, cool Naru would be capable of such a noise.

Except me.

The warmth, the affection for this boy, overwhelmed me and I had to embrace him. I felt that if I opened my mouth love would float out in a cross between a song and a laugh. My Naru. My precious Oliver Davis. May every good thing bless you, please, because I never wanted anyone to be so happy as I wanted Naru to be then. I would have given anything—my life, my dignity, my hopes, just for his sincere smile.

"That's okay," I managed. "You don't have to know. It's not like I've done this before either. Just do what you feel like doing."

"But what about what you want? What…what do you want me to do?" Since I had my arms about his shoulders, his mouth had been pressed against the curve of my neck, and its movement as he spoke made me shiver.

"I don't expect anything. I am just so, so happy right now, just like this. You're mine now, you know that? My Naru."

He gave a puff of air across my skin in amusement, but I could feel him relaxing into my embrace. "It would sound more romantic if you called me by my actual name."

"Oliver."

I could feel his smile. "Mai."

 **To any of you who get a copy of "Erase Me" or "Out of Duat" (my published books), PLEASE leave a review so others can find my book as well! And let me know what you think. ^.^**


	3. Lost

Chapter 2

I don't know if I had a memory of the forest in the first place strong enough to not be forgotten. But, walking among all the scarlet, orange, yellow, and shifty green made my head fill with rainbows. I remembered my elementary school calendar depicting Spring as the rainbow season. For the first time, I thought our cultural impressions to be mislead.

The hike was leisurely enough that I could invest my attention to my surroundings rather than to not tripping or panting up a storm…or sweating through the hand Naru held.

"How did I miss all this during the day?" I asked. "It isn't like the city has no trees or anything."

"Religions around the world regard mountains to have, not just physically cleaner air, but spiritually as well. Taoist and Buddhist monks build their monasteries on mountains, usually, and in the Bible there are several passages referring to 'the mountain of the Lord' as God's temple."

"...So spiritually clean air can help you see colors better?"

"I suppose it depends on how you're seeing everything right now." He looked about him idly, more serene than I had ever seen him. "Are you just seeing with your physical eyes right now, you think?"

I snatched at yet another especially bright leaf, like a child catching at something shiny. "How do you even know if you're looking at things spiritually?"

"You're closer to being a spiritualist than I am. Make a guess."

I fingered the scarlet leaf, smiling as I realized that, even though it had caught my eye, it really wasn't brighter than those around it. That didn't make the fire red any less beautiful. I considered it for my journal, then let fall to the ground. I couldn't be so greedy as to try and page-press the entire forest. But though each leaf was gorgeous, I had yet to settle with the one that would capture this memory—as best as a leaf could catch a memory.

"I guess my spiritual eyes would be whatever is recognizing the beauty right now." I scanned the canopy above me, envisioning the conversation that might ensue if I asked Naru to climb up and get me an especially pretty one. Suddenly, the idea of seeing Naru all manly and tall pulling down a leaf appealed to me.

"The beauty?" he asked.

"Well, um…from a scientific view, we're descended from, like, monkeys and stuff, right? Survival of the fittest and all that. So what does being able to see beauty do to help us survive in the jungle? If anything seeing all this would make me get eaten by the tiger all the more sooner, you know?"

His eyebrows went high. "That was very…astute of you. You may not be as dumb as you look."

"Hey! I have the keys to the dog house now, you know. Watch your step, hubby!"

He gave yet another loud laugh. "Hubby? Please no!"

"Oh my gosh, what's with you and names? First the Naru and Oliver thing last night—"

"It's endearments, Mai. You don't see anyone going around calling each other sardines, right? A certain level of taste is involved."

I grinned. _Sardine? Now there was an idea._ He caught on immediately to what I was thinking and laughed once more. It was in that perfect picture, Naru tipping his head back in mirth, dressed in a light blue sweater rather than the dreary black, that I saw the leaf I wanted, framed by a lock of his hair and lashes. I trotted about him and reached up, just to find it out of my reach. Without needing to be asked, he reached over me to pluck it down. Two dreams accomplished at once!

It was a beautiful, five fingered oak leaf, marbled with red, orange, gold, and green. Even the stem was a cinnamon brown, and it almost matched the size of my hand.

I squealed. "Perfect!"

"Going to make that into a bookmark?"

"Something like that. Come now, my little sardine—"

"Excuse me?"

"—we must return and preserve it, forthwith!"

"If anyone is going to be the little sardine, it's you, lovely anchovy."

"Is that a fish?"

"Yes."

"Fine. You can be a tuna—wait, that doesn't work."

"What?" He flashed me one of his…illegal smirks, of which I had only seen glimpses of before we were married, and now he seemed to find every excuse to give me. "Not tasty enough?"

And it was my game not to melt. "Oh my gosh, if Gene were here he'd be so proud. Now come on, already, I want hot chocolate!"

Careful to not twirl my leaf in my giddiness, I skipped about, pulling him along. The trail had been lightly covered with bark chips and lined with rocks here and there, so it wasn't difficult to see among all the glory. I had been so distracted with finding the right leaf, however, that I hadn't noticed when it had started to look more like a well used game trail. Couldn't expect those poor folk to bark and border the entire trail by hand, right? They'd have to carry up the bark chips by hand, the path was so narrow. That, or risk slicing through the forest.

We discussed fish endearments and what we would have for our late lunch when we returned to the hot springs. The dinner the night before had been nothing short of heavenly, and I couldn't wait to taste what they could have waiting for lunch.

"And maybe we could take a bath," said Naru, flashing his game smirk again.

He managed to make me blush, which also made me feel like I had lost, so I shoved him and called him black eel and he laughed.

It wasn't until my stomach gave a particularly nasty cramp and my feet started to ache that I really started wondering how far we had to go. The trail had yet to turn back to the well cared for path I remembered.

"If my legs give out from exhaustion, will you give me a piggyback?"

Naru snorted. "In all my acquaintance with you—"

"Of course you will. And it will be adorable!"

"Did you even want me to answer?"

"Posh, my fat Hunchback. I would never ignore the sound of your voice."

"Hunchback whales are a mammal, not a fish. Disqualified, puffer fish."

"Hey! I am nothing like a puffer fish!"

"I beg to differ. You become positively apoplectic with fury at times, it's quite amusing."

"You're the only one who finds it that way."

"And thus, here we are, which I'm starting to wonder just where that is exactly."

We both stopped at this, frowning to each other. We agreed on a break and found a fallen tree nearby to sit. I found a particularly fine stick which I took to poking at a nearby mushroom with.

"They said it was only a half mile hike, there and back," said Naru, his expression actually falling back into something like his usual taciturn. "We didn't even reach the end of the trail and yet it doesn't feel like a half mile. I'm sure we didn't take a wrong turn."

"When did the trail start looking like this?"

He glanced over at my mushroom assault. "Like what?"

"Well, when we started out it was all pretty and cared for, like, bark chips laid out and stones lining it and such. I figured they couldn't do the same this far because the trail got too narrow for ATVs to, you know, carry the wood chips and such." My mushroom finally snapped and fell over, gray gills flushed to the sky. "Crap, you don't think we took a wrong turn, do you? Without knowing?"

"They didn't say there were any turns. Just an easy up and down."

"Huh." I poked at the mushroom's gills.

But he shrugged and stood. "No use worrying about it. We can't be lost as long as we're on a trail of some sorts. Let's going."

"You call that a break?"

He rolled his head around, as though to ask, 'oh really?' "What's your idea of a break? Tea and crumpets?"

"Oh, ha ha. Give me a piggyback ride."

"What? Now? Why?"

"Because my feet hurt and I want a piggyback ride!"

Naru sighed. I fully expected him to refuse and start walking. I mean, just because I had married the guy didn't mean he wasn't still Naru. Besides, it kind of amused me when he acted like that.

He turned away and started walking, all right. Rather than refusing me, though, he crouched down in front of me, giving me his back. I gave a happy chirp and launched on him, nearly pitching him face first into the trail. He did much protesting and glaring, but the point was I got ride on Naru's back! And the best part about it was I got to bury my nose in his hair. The forest smell made you feel like you were breathing deep for the first time, but it was just so one could clear more room for Naru aroma.

"Jeeze, maybe you're the whale."

"What was that, plankton sweet?"

"Nice. Call me weak if I call you heavy. You are a full grown, healthy adult, right?"

"And you're a full grown man, so show me some muscle and find a different fish. Something pretty."

It wasn't long after we exhausted our list of known fish that we started to realize something was wrong. The path had yet to show any signs of civilization. In fact, it had even grown smaller. I asked Naru to put me down as a general sense of unease came over me and I thought about the man we had almost ran over the night before. Being lost was one thing. What if we ran in to him?

"It's just one man," said Naru, who had a hand above his eyes as he reconfirmed the position of the sun. "Nothing to be afraid of. If he does anything weird, I can handle him."

"Oh yes, genius and black belt in kung fu."

"Kick boxing and qigong, thank you. Here's our problem. Somehow we've ended up going south. The hotel's back west." He frowned. "I find it unlikely that I would have gone off the path without knowing it. I like to think I'm more aware of my surroundings than most."

I shrugged, not mentioning that he had been rather enjoying himself, so he couldn't be all that aware of where he was going. I couldn't become too cocky in my ability to distract him now, could I?

"So…what, do you think we should go off the path?"

He looked off into the west, where the hotel must be, right into the forest. He didn't answer right away, his shoulders straight. His mouth had gone thin, laugh lines forgotten.

"Naru?"

"Give me a moment."

Wondering if he could hear something, I perked up my ears. All I could pick up was the rustle of autumn leaves, the twitter of birds, and the distant hush of a stream or river. Maybe he was listening for cars. If we could hear cars, that meant the highway was close and tramping into the forest wouldn't be so blind. But if he knew it was west, wouldn't we step onto the highway anyways?

He folded his arms. "Never been lost before."

"I highly doubt that. Everyone has gotten lost before."

"Everyone isn't me."

"Yes yes, you're special. Care to let me in on your thoughts?"

"Wherever this path leads to is sure to get us somewhere, but how far away that somewhere is could be a problem. We were heading west not too long ago, so we should be close to the highway. Perhaps, if we wait, we can hear a car to verify that. Otherwise I don't think it would be very safe to trounce off into the woods. I'm not much of a woodsman."

There was something off about how he had said all that. I couldn't tell if it was his voice, his wording, or just the way he said it, but he kept looking off to the west, head cocked to the side as though to listen. Could it be that his shoulders were just a bit too stiff? Was he just worried?

I thought of the man again and shook it off. Naru had already assured me he wouldn't be a danger, even if he was totally bonkers enough to jump out in front of a moving car at night.

"Is there…something else?" I asked.

He looked over at me. "Hmm? What haven't I told you?"

"You tell me, I just feel like something is off about you." Then it hit me. "Um, d-d-doesn't getting mysteriously lost in the woods sound like a common ghost story to you?"

There it was. His eyes didn't so much as twitch. He was too still. He thought so too. He was probably remembering how I had said I had that instinct of unease last night, and how I said it was of the supernatural kind. Even as my view began to blur up with racing thoughts, I could see the man again, the flash of him in the headlights: thin, hunched, not someone one would expect to be able to dodge a car inhumanly quick.

Unless they were a ghost.

"DAMN IT!"

A few birds launched up from the trees in fright. Even Naru jumped.

"I didn't say anything—" he started.

"No freaking way is some ghost going to ruin my honeymoon! No way no way _no way!_ That's just too much—I mean, come on, we deal with ghosts all the time for our job, what's the likelihood they'll be on our honeymoon?"

"Slim to nothing," said Naru, growing irritable for the first time today. "And making theories before you have any sound evidence can be even worse than a real haunting, that's why I didn't say anything. Honestly, Mai, even you should know that. You've done this for, what, three years now?"

"Well jee, I'm sorry, but I'm sort of lost, hungry, and sort of freaking out here. It's not like you're helping with your arrogant 'I never get lost.' How else would we have gotten lost?"

"Maybe you're right. Maybe everyone gets lost and it's just my turn. But you need to stop thinking it's a ghost. Last thing we need is to start seeing stuff because of your over-active imagination."

" _My_ over-active imagination? You were the one to think of it first! Why else would you even say 'I don't get lost' or start getting suspicious of why we hadn't got back yet?"

"Mai, you're starting to act ridiculous."

"Why, because I have feelings? Try to be in my shoes for once, the last ghost experience I just had got me raped—"

"—I am fully aware of that." And he said every word like a hammered in block of ice. "Don't you think for one second that I have forgotten that. This is exactly why I didn't say anything."

"Why? Because you thought I'd start 'imagining' ghosts?"

"No, because I knew it would scare you!"

He had actually raised his voice that time, but it wasn't that which got me to shut up. Usually when people were angry or arguing, their faces would flush, but his had gone pale, and he had pulled his crossed arms even tighter to his chest, as though to curl in, though he stayed as straight and tall as ever. I knew my Naru, though, and I remembered all the other times he had yelled at me. I also remembered all the other times he was angry with me. Naru never yelled when angry. He was cold, precise, and an expert at the silent treatment.

My anger deflated like loosed balloon. "Naru, what's wrong?"

He gave a louder than necessary huff and all but threw his head, as though to move his bangs out of his eyes. "Nothing. Can we be quiet now so we can listen for cars?"

And since I had the distinct impression that I had just popped open a blister I hadn't known was there and made it worst, I quieted and found somewhere to sit where ants wouldn't crawl down my pants or leaves tickle my neck. Naru remained standing, face turned from me, arms still crossed.

Some time passed in cool silence between us. Some beauty around us had gotten lost somehow, and my leaf that I twisted in my fingers started to look a little worse for wear.

Because it didn't take much thinking for me to realize that Naru probably had more reason to be afraid than me. While I still had my clairvoyance, or 'animal instinct for danger' as he had put it so lightly, Naru was facing a possible ghost lost in the woods with no tech, no spiritualists to call on, no Lin, and with a new wife to protect. I thought back to the last time he had had to face a ghost alone and remembered his cool front. When he had a curse set on him, the malicious spirit that came to bring said curse came to him in his apartment, and eventually to both of us when we were stuck in the sewer, but he had simply faced it down till it left. In fact, now that I got thinking about it, he had always been fearless, even reckless, in the face of ghosts…until they started threatening me.

Of course he would at least try to protect me from the fear of a ghost. Of course he'd try to just keep it to himself. Of course.

"I'm sorry," Naru said.

I looked up at him, surprised, and went to cut him off, but he beat me to it.

"I may have not handled the situation appropriately. I should have just let you…get it out without trying to fix it or stop it. You would have been fine if I had. You always are. I let my own…apprehensions get in the way. For that, I'm sorry."

At least his arms weren't crossed as tight anymore. He even moved them down to his sides as he met my eye and saw my smile.

"Dang it, that's what I was going to say," I said. "Why do you have to keep all the good moments to yourself?"

Slowly, he returned my smile. It was the same one he had given me the last time I had said those words, back in the school yard, right after we had wrapped up the same case that he had gotten said curse on. What had I called it in my files again? 'The After School Hexer?'

I heard a familiar 'whoosh' of a distant car. Naru must have heard it too, for he perked up.

"And there we have it," he said, his shoulders relaxing.

"Yes! Food!"

"Yes," he said.

And as we took our first steps off the trail, Naru took up my hand once more.

 **If you happened to get a copy of 'Erase Me' or have read it before, please help me by leaving a review for it on Amazon. That way other people can find it as well! :D If not, I'll just, you know, fester in cysts and boils till I die in a pool of puss and my own body fluids...**


	4. Waterslide

**Merry Christmas, ya'all! Let me know what you think of the story so far and if there's anything I could do for you for Christmas! Within my power, that is. I can't really fly to your house and give you a pony that poops rainbows, I ain't freaking Santa Clause.**

Chapter 3

By the time we made it back to the hotel it was getting dark. We first had dinner, which was a wide array of sushi that I stuffed myself on, followed by a soak in the springs outside our room's patio. Naru nearly had to physically drag me from the springs I was so sleepy. The day's exertions had been long and stressful, though a little adventure here and there never went amiss. The moment my head hit the pillow I was gone into a deep, warm sleep.

Which was why I was confused when I found myself awake at some odd hour of the night. Figuring I might as well go pee now so I could sleep in for as long as possible, I wriggled out from underneath Naru's arm and padded my way across the room to the bathroom. As I passed the glass patio doors, something out of the corner of my eye made me pause. The moon was out, though I couldn't see it through the heavy steam created by the cold autumn air meeting with the hot spring. The effect was a vague gray glow with the blurred shape of the privacy fence and landscaping.

And through the miss, I through I could just make out the shape of someone.

Heart stalling, I stood as though my feet had been glued to the floor mid-stride. They stood in the far corner, right up against the fence, dark and hunched as though their arms were just too heavy. Just as I was starting to wonder if it was just a figment of my imagination—maybe one too many ghost cases getting to my head—the figure rose its dark shaped head. It didn't stop where I thought it should too, but kept going and going, stretching the body beneath it up and up until I couldn't believe I had ever thought them short. Their arms stretched like taffy, hands reaching for a stone through the mists.

An overwhelming impression of being seen, of being wanted as a hungry wolf wants the sheep, washed over me. I opened my mouth to scream for Naru, but no noise came out. The ever more inhumanly long figure stepped towards me, tree-like, taffy fingers scuttling like spider legs towards the step of the patio. Any second now they'd draw near enough for me to see their features through the steam. There'd be no nail, no knuckle, just bendy miles of flesh.

I woke with a start and a gasp. It took me longer than it should to realize I was still in bed and staring up at the ceiling of our room. One would think I'd get use to these dreams. But, then, was there ever any getting use to them?

Shivering from a thin layer of cold sweat, I felt around for Naru, and on not finding him, I peeled back the blankets and looked about. Outside the glass patio doors it was raining, which made it difficult to the tell the time. At least no weird stretch-man was outside it.

"Naru?"

A panel on the other end opened, revealing a yukata dressed Naru with a newspaper in his hands. He sat at a winter kotatsu that must have been brought in while I was sleeping. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"You got that look," he said, reaching over to bring up a rather out of place, western styled tea-cup to his lips.

"Just a weird nightmare of some creepy thing by the spring," I said, pawing about for my own yukata. "It was like that hunched man that we almost hit, except it was like he…stood up and became all stretched out, it was creepy. All the mist covering his features didn't help."

"Hmm." He blew over his tea and took a sip, eyes once more back to the newspaper.

Too happy about being awake and with him to care about whether he was listening or not, I pulled on my yukata and made my way over to the kotatsu, where breakfast had been lain out. It was a mixture of a classic English and Japanese breakfast, which I though fitting for the couple it would be feeding.

The heater under the kotasu and warm blanket helped to dispel the last of the chill from my nightmare. We ate in a comfortable, homey silence, only broken by a turn of the page or the clink of a cup. Occasionally Naru would start rubbing my leg with his foot in an absent minded sort of way.

Naru finished his paper and spoke as he folded it up. "I take it was an important dream since you're so willing to forget about it."

"Your logic makes no sense," I said around a mouthful of English muffin.

"Just because you have accepted the fact you have clairvoyance doesn't mean you like drawing attention to yourself or your gift. When you're sure it's a normal dream, you're more likely to talk about it, even if it's a nightmare, because that's how you help reassure yourself that it was a dream. On the other hand, if you're not so sure, you push it aside, probably without even thinking much about it."

"I've told you about my visions before," I said, more surprised than annoyed with his ability to see through me.

"If you know for sure that they pertain to whatever case we're on," he said, setting aside the newspaper and leaning back on his hands. "Since we have no case, my theory remains unchallenged. So, tell me, why are you unsure about whether it's a normal dream?"

He was right, in a way. On waking up I had questioned it myself, and half of the time I could tell whether or not I was having just a normal wacky dream or my latent psychic abilities picking up on something.

He was patient and let me think on it for a minute or so. As he waited he started petting my calf with his toes once more.

"I think it's just how much it unnerved me," I said. "It looked like a monster, not a person, and the way I felt as he looked at me—I guess, I think he was looking at me. I couldn't see his face."

"That's comforting."

I lifted a crescent, as though it were the subject for our conversation. "But it was just a bad dream. Nothing to be worried about. You were the one who said not to jump to conclusion."

"True." He put down his empty tea cup and reached for the tea pot. "Either way, I can't say I'm not eager to return home. Vacations never suited me."

"All the more reason to stay for the week as planned. If we go home you'll just suck yourself back to work." I leaned my elbows onto the table with my hands on my cheeks. His eyes went exactly where I wanted them as my loose yukata hung low from my chest.

"What else to we have planned to do, then? Besides getting lost in forests." He tried pulling his eyes away, but his toes had curled up away from my leg.

"Wasn't there something about a water amusement park not far from here? One of those carved out of the hot spring places—you know. The one _you_ found—or are you having a hard time concentrating?"

"Mai, don't tease me."

"Why?" I pulled my leg from his foot to paw my own toes up his leg.

"I-uh-because—"

"Did the great Naru just say 'uh'?"

He growled low in his throat and pulled out from the kotatsu. "Damn it, get over here."

With that out of the way, we got in our car and headed back to the freeway with our swim suits in tow. It actually wasn't far away at all, as ten minutes later we reached the adjacent side of the mountain where the prolific hot springs had been turned into a small water park, consisting of two swimming pools, two hot water slides, and various other warm water enjoyments to steam up the cool autumn air.

The moment Naru stepped out in his swimming trunks, he froze up. Children and other patrons were laughing and splashing everywhere. At first I thought it was just because he was cold, but when we had been in one of the larger hot water pools for fifteen minutes with me paddling around him as he more or less huddled against a vent, I figured it was something else.

"Are you afraid of the water?" I asked.

He glared daggers at me, making me jump. I didn't expect such a violent response.

"Of course not. You've seen me swim before."

"What's wrong then?"

"Nothing. I'm just not as playful as you. Never have been, even when I was a child."

And because he sounded like such a grouch, I splashed water into his face. He spluttered and glared reproachfully at me, so much so that I actually started to feel like I had really done something wrong.

Wilting in the water, I gave a quiet sorry and decided it would probably be best to leave him alone for a bit, though the truth was that I wanted to be away from him. He didn't stop me as I swam to the other side of the pool and got out. The steam kept the goose bumps away until I could make it into the cozy cover of the tunnel which held the stairs up to the waterslide. I hugged myself anyways, hoping it would help the hurt part of me feel better.

A pair of young men filed behind me. As we rose up the steps, so did a gaggle of children. There wasn't much of a line, though, just many steps.

"Just how tall is this thing?" I asked aloud.

"I wonder that every time," said one of them, who had bleached hair and deep dimples as he smiled at me.

"I think that whenever I hear the steps creak," said his friend, who looked about Monk's age and could have been an older brother. "I don't think they've ever replaced the wood staircase that's been here since the place opened thirty years ago."

Even as he said it, a step beneath my foot gave an awful squelch of wet wood.

"Holy crap!" I said.

"You can say that again," said the bleached boy as he stepped on it as well and another unsavory squelch sounded in the tunnel

"Where you from? Tourist, right?" asked the older of the two.

"Tokyo, and yeah, I'm staying at hotel."

They gave low whistled. "You must be fine stuff."

A bit of warmth rose to my cheeks. "Uh, um, not really. It's the first time I've ever done anything this nice, I mean, usually I'm saving every yen I make."

"What do you do for work?"

"Um, I don't know if you want to know." It only took their raised eyebrows to realize how bad that sounded. "It's not like that! It's just, uh…well…" Psychic sounded better than ghost hunting, right? "I work for Shibuya Psychic Research."

That just made their eyebrows go higher. Just then we reached the top and the end of the short line. A life guard sat next to the maw of the waterslide with the red rescue board flat against his lap. He let a little girl with a little frilly skirt on her swimsuit go, then tapped his fingers as he counted.

The boys must have only been mildly interested before, because their looks and their voices betrayed eager intrigue now.

They spoke at once.

"What do you do—"

"Are you psychic?"

"What kinds of stuff have you—"

"Do you meet lots of psychic people?"

The older man in front of us jumped into the waterslide. I walked up and put my feet in the water, waiting on the life guard.

"Um, well," which to answer first? It was like being at high school after Naru hired me all over again. "I work for a man named Oliver Davis, he's the one you should really be impressed with—"

Naru's true name didn't mean anything to the younger, but the older lit up.

"Davis? _The_ Oliver Davis?"

"Go," said the lifeguard.

Suddenly uncomfortable with the situation (perhaps the attention was all the more uncomfortable because I was in a swim suit instead of fully clothed in my school uniform), I took hold of the handle bar above the opening of the slide and threw myself into the darkness.

The hushing sigh of water, splashing, and warm air blowing past my ears calmed me. I closed my eyes, loving the feeling of being taken away. I thought of Naru and why it had hurt so much to be glared at like that when I had just been trying to have fun. Why didn't I snap back like I usually did? What was so different this time?

Maybe because I realized that I was stuck with this. That, in the end, I was stuck with this wet, bi-polar blanket that didn't know how to have fun.

What a horrible thought. I loved Naru. Just because amusement parks seemed to make him uncomfortable didn't make him an awful husband.

The air suddenly grew cold. Thinking I was near the end, I opened my eyes to ready myself. The light through the green plastic of the slide made the water look thick, red, and opaque.

Something acidic and icy clawed its way to my throat, cutting off my breath even as I smelled it.

 _Blood._


	5. To Be Needed

**Late Christmas present, as requested! Merry Day After Christmas!**

Chapter 4

The humid warmth became oppressive, pressing against my mouth like a cotton wad. The ending of the slide came with a burst of sunlight and air, shooting me out in a spray of ruby. As far as I could see was red water, dark, with chunks of clotted blood floating on the surface. The children played in it as though they didn't see a thing, their skins stained and their mouths drinking in the too-thick, red liquid like it was milk. People lounged in pools once filled with water, now no more, looking every bit like the victims of a murder scene. Underscored by this garish scene, the gray clouds that had covered the sky since this morning took on a smoky pallor.

The blood swallowed me whole. It felt like blood: thick, warm, filling my mouth with copper rust.

Just as I clawed my way to the surface, screaming, a large body came out-too soon-and into the back of my head and shoulders.

The next thing I knew I was staring up at Naru as he pulled away from my mouth, his pale face putting at odds the light gray of the sky behind it. His dark blue eyes shivered on me. My chest ached awfully beneath his hands, as though someone had lain a couch across me.

Then I was fighting for breath, coughing and vomiting water-blessed water. He helped me sit up, but his attention was to someone behind me.

"I could sue you for this."

"I swear the lifeguard told me it was okay to go," said the voice of one of the boys I had been talking to before.

"And it wasn't like he told him to go right after, it was, like, the usual time you wait, you know?" said the other.

"No," said Naru flatly, and before I could catch my breath to say anything, his arms slipped beneath my knees and shoulders and lifted me. As he did so, I managed to catch sight of the small crowd we had attracted, including a young female life guard who had her hands raised to stop him.

"Please, sir, will you allow me to check on her condition to see whether we need to call an ambulance or not? Please?"

Naru ignored her. He ignored me as well as I weakly kicked my feet to be free, but I wasn't certain I could walk anyways even if he had. My head still spun from loss of oxygen.

"I'm really sorry!" cried the boy Naru had threatened.

"It was just an accident," I said, though my cough-abused throat didn't manage to say it too loud. "Naru, calm down, I'm fine."

"We're going home."

"What? Come on, it was just an accident."

"Humor me. I wasn't enjoying myself anyways."

"Then at least put me down, you're causing a scene!"

He did so, but we had reached the locker rooms anyways. I wobbled a bit as blood rushed away from my brain to my legs, and he caught me with narrowed eyes.

"I leave you alone for one minute-"

I throw off his arm, irked. "I don't need you to babysit me. It was just an accident, it could have happened to anyone." He didn't need to know about the blood. I didn't want him to know. I could already see that it had just been in my head, as the spring waters had turned back to normal, and all the patrons didn't look like _Saw_ extras anymore.

"But it keeps happening to you. Paranormal work isn't suppose to be this dangerous, and yet with you around it is."

"There's nothing paranormal about this, and we're not at work! This is just an ordinary accident, okay? Honestly, you're so embarrassing!"

And doing my best not to notice the stares, or the female lifeguard who had followed but feet away and now looked honestly sorry for me, I all but fled into the women's locker room. Skipping the shower, I dried, shoved my clothes on, and all but stomped past Naru at the exit. I was set on not speaking a word to him all the way back to the hotel, but my locked car door stopped me. When Naru didn't unlock it, just stood on the other side of the car, looking at me as though expecting me to say something, I snapped for what he wanted.

"Do we need to go to the hospital? He did knock you out," he said, expression closed.

"You can't be seriously asking me that. Just open the door already, I'm not talking to you."

"What did I do wrong? All I did was save you from drowning."

"If you have to ask that, there's no use explaining."

He gave me a long, hard look, the kind he usually gave to a graph of readings from a night of paranormal activity. But the electronic locks of the car clicked loose. I threw myself in, buckled up, and pulled my legs up to set my chin morosely on my knees.

I didn't want to think about what happened. I really didn't.

The ten minutes it took to drive back to the hotel gave me the time I needed to sort through my thoughts. There wasn't much to sort out. Either I was going mad or something had made me see that blood and somehow got me stuck in the slide without me noticing it. I thought of my dream, getting lost in the woods, the vanishing man who had jumped in front of our car, and my sense of foreboding. All of it pointed towards something supernatural, or, rather, I really hoped it was something supernatural.

The question was whether or not to tell Naru. I didn't want to, as it would take our first time together alone, our first real vacation as a couple, without something paranormal in the mix. I wanted to be with Naru off the job. If he turned this into a paranormal case, or worse, he started up again about me being a magnet for troublesome ghosts...it wasn't like I had fun making him worry. The man could be such a control freak.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I decided to wait and see. If I could just ignore the happenings and enjoy my vacation, all the better. I could always tell Naru afterwards and let him make a case out of it then.

He turned off the car and sat back. Neither of us made a move to get out. Our hair was still wet and it was chilly outside, but now that our activity for the morning had gone, I guess we also didn't now what to do next.

"I'm sorry."

I glanced over at him, but he wasn't looking at me. I sighed and rubbed my forehead against my arm-bridge set over my knees.

"What for? I was the one that you keep having to save."

"I embarrassed you."

"Oh...yeah, you did sort of freak out a bit. Were you really going to sue that guy?"

"It was appealing, since it wouldn't be acceptable to punch him. I never thought the threat of assault charges would make me rue modern society."

"But it was an accident, really. They're nice guys, I was talking to them on the way up."

He leaned forward and rested his arms on the steering wheel, mirroring my same look of moodiness. "Yeah, well, I didn't say it was a rational urge."

"If I knew you hated waterparks, I wouldn't have planned to go there."

He sighed. "I don't hate waterparks, persay. I just don't do crowds. I thought you knew that by now."

I snorted. "That place was hardly crowded."

His head pivoted on his chin to give me a cinched eyebrow look that broke the taciturn mask once more. I breathed in relief that we were getting back to normal. "If that's not it, I'd loathe to see your idea of crowded."

I rolled my eyes and stretched my legs out across the dash. "We live in Tokyo, Japan. Seriously, haven't you ever been on a train? Or any public transportation for that matter."

"...no."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't do crowds," he said again, this time turning his face away from me as his ears had started to grow a little pink.

"How have you managed to live here all these years?"

"I don't exactly work a normal office job. My commute is relatively clear of people."

"Guess I'll see it for myself from now on, huh?" I grinned at him, even though I suspected he couldn't see. "Lucky us we get to commute to work together. How many married couples, especially as young as us, get to brag about that?"

"I'd rather if that wasn't the case anymore."

Something prickled painfully in my chest. "What, are you saying you don't like working with me anymore?"

"Of course not," he said quickly. "But, well...it would be ridiculous to keep pretending that I'm your boss. My money is your money now, so paying you couldn't really happen. Also..."

But I already knew where this was going, and it made my insides go uncomfortably hot and hard. "You meant what you said, then. You think I'm a magnet for trouble and are tired of babysitting me."

He snapped upright to glare at me. "Why do you always have to assume the worse? You're the one who wanted to be a housewife, I thought I was giving you what you want. But if you must know, yes. You've gotten into one too many horrible situations that I think could have been avoided if I wasn't sticking you in them. It wasn't like you got into that much misfortune before I met you-"

"Both my parents died," I said angrily, and I got the desired flinch from him. "Life is misfortune after the other, and if you haven't noticed by now, death isn't much different. When you're dealing with the kind of stuff that causes hauntings, how can you not expect something bad to happen?"

"Exactly! I'm your husband, I'm suppose to keep you safe-what if something happens while you're pregnant?"

"What, am I going to be pregnant for the rest of our lives?"

"No! Mai-"

But I had had enough. I couldn't shake off that Naru thought, without meaning to, that I was unnecessary to his career, even useless. I knew being a housewife meant caring for a family, but I had always seen myself helping out with his cases on the side. I didn't think I'd just be left alone in my house while he went off with the rest of our friends, helping people and having adventures.

I opened the car door and slipped out. Naru got out as well.

"Mai, wait, I think there's a misunderstanding. I didn't think this would-I shouldn't have mentioned this so soon after the pool, I'm sorry."

"I just need a minute alone," I said, zipping up my coat. "I think I'm overreacting again, so just...I'll be back in a few minutes."

His brow wrinkled up with concern. "For God's sake, please stay close to the hotel."

I wanted to snap at him, ask him if he thought I walked into trouble on purpose or if he thought I was stupid, but reeled in my tongue. We couldn't spend all of our honeymoon fighting. This was getting ridiculous.

"I will," I said instead.

Stuffing my hands in the pockets of my coat, I shuffled through the parking lot and around the corner of the hotel. The trees pressed in close here, but in a maintained sort of way. Even the underbrush had been carefully groomed to give the natural forest floor a clean, almost indoor sort of look. I almost laughed out loud at the thought that I could get lost in it. It woudl be like the pretty, bark covered trail we had hiked down. I really did just need some time to cool off. It wasn't like Naru underappreciated me. He had married me, after all, and usually you appreciate the person you swear your life to. And I couldn't very well ignore the fact that there hadn't been a lot of freaked out crap that had happened to us since the beginning. Ayako's near death experience with the exorcised kuman thong could have easily happened to me. After all, the unborn baby spirit had just been looking for a uterus to inhabit. Then there was all the times I had ended up in the hospital, or friends of ours had ended up in the hospital.

I bit my lip. It wasn't like I could ask Naru to find a different career either. He had gotten an honorary doctorate in paranormal research at fifteen, for crying out loud! That was two years before he even met me! It was his passion and his interest. Taking away his supernatural research would be like taking away my...my...

I leaned against a tree, suddenly hit with the urge to cry. What interest did I have that could compete with Naru's drive? I had no ambitions. Hell, I wanted to be a stay at home mom. Being barefoot and pregnant was the only thing I had given him plans for, and now I was getting all butthurt about it?

"Oh God, why did he marry me?" I said to myself as I pressed a hand to my eyes.


	6. Out To Get You

**Hey, ya'll. I'm really sorry for the unorthodox week-late update. x.x I tried to lower my anxiety meds and ended up having panic attacks and all sorts of stuff that sort of tied me into a useless lump for a while...also, I had this chapter written for a while, but I was uncertain of whether or not I wanted it there. I'm uncertain of this story in general. It's as muddled and anxious as I am right now.**

 **But, I've gone back on my full dose again *sigh*, so I'm more or less back to normal, your personal nut case. T.T So you can trust that from here on out, updates will be the same, at least once a week, etc. Sorry 'bout that.**

Chapter 5

Naru was waiting for me back at our room with a stack of book and a pot of tea. The chilly autumn air had clung to me via my wet hair and damp skin, making the warmth of his arms all the more welcoming. He held out a dry yukata for me to dress in, then picked out a book from the small stack.

"I hope you won't mind, but now that we've tried your activity, let's try mind."

With that, he sat on the low-standing couch with a futon comforter at his feet and beckoned me closer. I more than happily cuddled up to him before turning around between his legs and pulling up the comforter. Once I had done so, he brought his arms around me, setting the book he had chosen before us.

"I tried to get something we'd both like. This author in particular I've verified as having some very astute findings."

I wrinkled my nose, but since I was trying to play extra nice, I didn't complain about him picking out a nerd book and thinking I'd like it.

So we read it together. Naru would check with me before turning until it devolved into him turning the page and me pressing my thumb down on the hand holding the book if I wasn't ready.

Surprisingly enough, I was drawn in after the forward. Yes, I was right about it being a nerd book, but Naru had failed to mention that the author was also clairvoyant. The book was about near-death experiences and was more a collection of stories, though his small conclusion notes at the end of each chapter were fascinating as well.

"Maybe if they got someone right on the edge of death in an MIR..." I muttered.

A puff of air rustled my hair as Naru gave a quiet snort of acknowledgement. "They'd have to have positive evidence that the patient could be resuscitated, though. I bet he mentions that same idea soon-ah, there we are." he had turned the next page, and being a quicker reader than I, was able to get the gist of it.

As he waited for me to catch up, he reached over onto the kotatsu that he had pulled close and brought over a cup of tea for me. I kissed the hand holding it in thanks without halting my reading.

I was warm. I was with the person I loved the most in the world, and I was gloriously happy. At that moment, supernatural phenomenon and misfortune couldn't seem farther away.

Of course, I had always had a talent for dozing at a moment's notice. I had just finished my tea and leaned back to enjoy the feel of Naru's ultra comfy chest holding me up, and simply didn't get around to sitting back up on my own. How could I? I could have never felt more at ease or safe in my life.

Alright, Naru's idea totally beat mine. This was relaxation.

I opened my eyes to find the glass patio doors blurred over from the steam of the spring. I wondered if a cold front had moved in as I carefully sat up and took assessment of my position. Naru had fallen asleep behind me, his upper back against a pillow which he'd put as a barrier between him and the wall that the couch armrest didn't cover. The book we had been reading had been set on the ground with a bookmark alongside our empty tea cups.

I had the impression that something had woken me up. Wondering if it had been one of the staff coming by to ask for dinner, I got up to check the door, but no one was there. Figuring I'd wait for Naru to wake up before chasing anything down, I stretched and made my way to the doors. A dip in the hot springs sounded really nice right about now.

The setting sun turned the steam to gold. I admired it as I reached around to untie my yukata. Movement caught my eye and I froze. A bird?

No. Something was rising from the landscaping. A figure, hunched, with arms reaching the ground like an orangutan.

Any sense of warmth fled, and a chill, not unlike the touch of winter on the edge of these autumn days, crawled up my spine. He, it, whatever it was, was closer than last time, and it was moving. It staggered, swinging its shadowy arms, wagging its head. The steam and evening shadows blurred the features, but as it neared its fingers pulled its hands ahead like the legs of spiders. They paused, something more than shadow and less than flesh, before scuttling up the steps till only the glass separated its touch from my toes.

I couldn't move. I couldn't speak.

The thing pulled in after its arms, as though the fingers were the reel and its body the string. It started to lift its head, higher and higher, its height once more unfurling beneath it like a banner.

A hand shot up to slap against the glass, which erupted with cracks.

"Mai! Wake up!"

I woke with a gasp, which turned to a cough. Naru was pulling out from behind me, and black smoke had filled the room. The ominous crackling of flames echoed about me, and I couldn't make out anything through the glass patio doors. All I could see was steam.

Naru coughed, then gave me the shove I needed to start moving. I started running towards the door into the hallway, but he yanked me back towards the patio door. A thrill of terror locked up my knees, even as I saw the tongues of orange flame licking out from the blackness in the corner of my vision.

"No-" in my gasp I sucked in a full lungful of smoke, which took over my body in wracking coughs. I had barely any control enough to fight back as Naru dragged me the rest of the way to the doors and threw them open. Steam and smoke collided, swirling about one another through my streaming eyes.

He threw us into the spring. Instantly I fought for the surface, suffocating, desperate for air.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong, because the instinct to run was screaming in me as it never had before. The thought that I had to get out of the water consumed me.

"Stay in here! We'll be safe until the help come-" he stopped to cough, his hands clamped about my waist. "Damn it, Mai, be still!"

"We-" I couldn't get enough air to speak. My throat burned so bad! The smoke- _get out of the water!_

With a sudden spurt of petrified adrenaline (as it could have only been to move me to such an impossible feet), I took hold of Naru and all but hauled him out of the spring, even as it started to boil and the steam clogged up my face.

He scrambled away not a moment too soon. Burning-pain-I couldn't see anymore.

" _Mai!_ "

His hands fisted in the front of my yukata and pulled me out. Even after the now cold air rushed in, I still burned. It could have only been the adrenaline keeping me conscious now, as I hadn't even the breath to scream, though my throat attempted to and ended up choking on intercepted coughs.

"Mai, Mai, just calm down, just breathe-oh God, oh God Almighty, this can't be happening."

 _Get out of the water._

I shoved weakly at his leg. My vision darkened. Air. Air. I had to be drowning.

 _Get out of the water._

I could hear the spring boiling and hissing for all it was worth.

"Mai, please!"

And I knew no more.


	7. In Flame and Water

**Thank you for your patience and your kindness. I apologize for any mistakes there may be in this document. I wanted to get it to you as quick as possible.**

 **^.^ Thank you for your kind words as well. I am getting better.**

Chapter 6

A female voice I didn't know brought in the night sky, or rather, a sky of smoke lit up by an unseemly mix or orange, blue, and red.

"Mai, can you hear me? How old are you?"

"Oliver?" I could barely hear myself. First off, my voice sounded like I had smoked six packs a day for most of my life. Secondly, something had been put over my mouth and nose. I reached up to pull it off but was stopped by a cool hand, which brought me to the face of the speaker: a sharp faced woman somewhere in her thirties with kind eyes.

"Your husband's okay, Mai. He's right ahead of us getting some oxygen. Just breathed in a bit of smoke, everything will be all right. Can you tell me how old you are?"

But I was pushing my head to the side, searching for him even as I took in that I was laying down on something being pushed by the woman as well as another person on the other side. They wore the black uniform of paramedics. I didn't care what that meant. It only made me flustered because I couldn't see past their arms and torsos. I couldn't see Naru.

"Mai? Can you hear me?"

"Eighteen," I rasped.

"Wow, and already married? Well, you picked right, you can tell from a mile away how much he loves you."

The top of the stretcher hit something metal and the white interior light of the ambulance mixed in with the red, blue, and orange. Radios buzzed, people shouted, and beneath it all I could hear the quiet hum of an idling engine.

It wasn't till the paramedics had folded up the bottom of the stretcher and started pushing me in that I registered the dark figure of my husband holding a plastic breath mask to his face, the same I figured was on my face as well. He still wore his yukata and a blanket had been tossed over him.

Despite the pain, I reached for him. He reached for me too, but as his pale hand came close to mine the more apparent the pink tinge of my own skin became.

He took my fingers gingerly and I ignored how my skin smarted at the contact. The pain was what you would expect of a light sunburn. I opened my mouth to ask him if he was okay, to tell him I loved him, to tell him he was right about me being a stupid, freaking magnet for trouble.

But something else came out instead.

"We can't leave yet."

His eyebrows knitted up. Before he could remove the breathing mask to speak, the paramedics climbed into the back and closed the back doors of the ambulance.

The urgency I didn't quite understand jumped in my chest. I tried to sit up, realizing my legs had been strapped down in the process. My head only teetered a bit from the sudden movement, for which I was glad.

"Stop!" My raspy throat caught, forcing me into a fit of coughing.

The older, male paramedic rushed to my side. "It's alright, no one else was hurt. The fire was contained."

My head started to spin for a whole other reason. My alarm was growing, but my raw throat wouldn't unstick. We had to stop. The ambulance shouldn't leave. I didn't know why, all I knew was that something terrible would happen if it did.

The ambulance gave a gravel crunch of tires and jerked into motion. The female paramedic had taken hold of my hand to clip a small device onto my finger. I felt a prick, and she pulled it back. "Her oxygen levels are still too low," she said, reading the numbers on the tiny screen of the poking device.

"Can you tell us where it hurts?" asked the other paramedic.

Naru watched me, the only person in the ambulance who seemed to really be hearing what I was saying. He squeezed my hand.

"Is something bad coming?" he asked quietly. "Is it one of those feelings?"

I nodded fervently. Tears prickled to my irritated eyes as my coughs subsided, but left my throat feeling raw and tender.

He returned the nod, then reached out to jerk the sleeve of the woman paramedic. "Stop the ambulance."

"Sir, the effects of high levels of smoke inhalation untreated-"

"I'm well aware of them," said Naru evenly. "But something worse will happen if you don't listen to her."

Her eyes narrowed. "Is that a threat, young man?"

"No. It's a warning. My wife is sensitive to possible danger. If she says the ambulance should stay at the hotel, you should listen."

The woman didn't say anything to verify it, but her disbelief was more than clear as she urged Naru to return the breathing apparatus to his face. The older paramedic, who was checking the skin beneath my yukata sleeves and around my neck, seemed intent to just stay out of it.

"Have her feelings ever been wrong?" she asked.

"Not that I'm aware of."

Embarrassment was starting to cloud up my sense of dread. How long had the road been zipping beneath us? How far had we already gotten?

"Naru," I rasped.

The older paramedic pushed gently on my shoulder. "Just relax, little miss. Nothing's going to happen. You're safe now."

"You can't force people to the hospital who don't want to go," said Naru. "Can't you at least stop for a few moments?"

"Other people need us," said the woman, her voice taking on a wiry, impatient quality. "If every ambulance waited around for someone to feel comfortable, people would die."

I heard a loud 'pop!' as though a tire had run over a particularly large rock. My stomach contracted, and unbidden came the thought to my mind that it didn't matter anymore.

Before I could even begin to doubt myself, the world upended in a dragon-isk groan of metal. The inside of the ambulance became the tumble of a clothing dryer. Only I stayed in place, strapped to the gurney which apparently had been locked to the floor. But Naru, along with the other paramedics, went high.

A strange pressure balled in my head, as though great hands were pressing in on my skull. My hand that had been holding Naru's clenched hard, pulling him in, even as the hurricane roars of crunching metal burst my ears. I felt his weight on me, his arms respond.

Then it all cracked to a stop. The white light went out, plunging us into darkness. In the tumble I had somehow managed to get my arms tight around Naru and I could feel his racing heartbeat. We had stopped at an angle, and the straps of the gurney were digging into my legs to keep me there.

My hands raced up and down my husband in the darkness, searching for wounds as I croaked his name.

"Mai, Mai, I'm okay. You-the paramedics-"

"You sure? If you're lying to me for manliness sake, I swear I-"

"I mean it. You...lord, you pulled me in like..." he paused. "Shh."

I listened too, but it was hard to hear anything past my racing, frantic blood. All I could pick up was the sound of a river. Had we rolled into one? What had made the ambulance crash? It wasn't an altogether happy feeling to know that my instincts had been correct.

Suddenly, Naru was in motion. He pulled off the mask from my face and tore open the velcro of the gurney straps. I stumbled against the steepfloor, sliding into something soft-a body.

"Naru, we have to-"

"Move!"

I then took notice of a sharp, pungent odor that had filled the cabin.

Naru kicked the back doors open and threw us out, even as I fought against his grip. We broke out into the cool, late afternoon and into the shallow shore of the same creek I had heard. The road was some distance away up a steep hill, which, based off the broken trees and scrapes through the ground covering, had been what the ambulance had tumbled off of.

I only got a moment to register all this before fire burst into being around the cab of the ambulance.

This couldn't be happening. It just wasn't rational. It was just way too much.

"The driver!" But my throat couldn't handle the scream and cracked me over. Without the breathing mask I found myself doubled over, coughing through the head splitting pain of my abused throat.

But Naru moved. He scrambled up the bank side to the doors and took hold of an arm of each unconscious paramedic and pulled. They ungraciously slid out of the back, even as the fire swallowed it whole like the maw of a great python. Naru let the bodies tumble down into the creek, even as he jumped down as well with a great splash.

"Get down, Mai!"

I moved too slowly and Naru through himself over me. He didn't a moment too soon as a thundercrack roared and smashed us down into the water. I watched in bewilderment as the water lit up with fire before clenching my eyes close and focused on not getting dragged away by the current. It wasn't a large river, but the middle in which Naru had thrown ourselves into was still hip deep-deep enough to bury us from the flames.

We came up gasping. I clung to his arm as he pulled me to the other side.

"Stay," he said firmly.

I watched, shivering, fighting for breath, as he sloshed to the other side to the paramedics and turned them so their clothes that hadn't been submerged in the water could have the fire dancing on them put out. He crouched down between them, a finger to each throat. I turned my eyes from him to the blackened, ruptured corpse of the ambulance. The unmistakable blackened arm and head of a person hung out of the driver side door.

Something within me broke and I went numb. Everything became distant, as though it were happening to someone else in a movie and I was just an observer.

Naru came back to me, his yukata torn and wet. He had some scratches on his arms and what looked to be a reddening bruise on his jaw, but otherwise looked unharmed.

"Come on, sweet." He reached out to help me out of the water. He put a hand over my eyes. "That's enough. Don't look anymore. You're going to be okay."

"Are they okay?" I rasped.

"We're not that far from the hotel. Someone's had to have heard the crash, they'll be here in a minute."

Once I had stumbled onto the shore, my feet numb from cold, he put an arm around my shoulders and underneath my knees, lifting me like the bemused little bride that I was. I clung to his soaked clothing, yearning for his heat even as I stressed about his own chill.

"I can walk," I said.

"Humor me," he breathed. "I just want to hold you...just for a bit...please..."

I clung to his neck, letting my chin rest on my wrist. I forced myself not to look at the flaming wreckage we were leaving, but rather the river and the tunnel beneath the freeway that it ran into. I hadn't noticed it until now. So the river ran beneath the road. The tunnel itself looked big enough for someone to walk through, if they bent over.

Even as I thought that, I made out a hunched shadow next to the opening, half hidden by brown autumn grass and bushes.

I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. The only thing that kept my mind working was the cool numbness that had broken over me. This wasn't happening.

"It's here," I whispered.

I knew he heard, but he just kept on going. He headed towards a more gentle slop upwards that ran alongside the road, rather than trying to scale the steep incline straight to it.

I watched the dark, hunched figure, and I sensed it watched me back, until a large tree blocked my view.

"I think you saved my life," said Naru, starting to sound a bit out of breath, which was phenomenal considering all that happened. When I didn't say anything, just kept starting at the spot where the trees blocked off the figure, he said, "There's no way you could have pulled me to you in all that. The centrifugal force, my weight...and I recognize the feeling. The energy, it...but that's insane. It happened to quick, I must be mistaken. Though...you've never had any inkling that you might have PK, have you?"

That made me smile. "That's funny."

"I thought so. Maybe it was just me. Some probably leaked out of me in the chaos."

My grip tightened painfully. "Are you okay?"

"I feel fine. Besides freezing and a bit bruised, fine. You?"

"It's mostly my throat."

"Yeah, you sound horrendous. Mai..." His voice suddenly broke. His next words came out more of a gasp or a sob. "Mai, I love you." He stopped, his arms about me trembling. "Mai. Mai."

I hugged his head to me, letting his shaking roll over into me. He repeated my name like a child's sobbing mantra of 'Mommy.'

All the while, I kept watch for the shadow, numb and raw like a raw wound to open air. The smoke of the ambulance poured up from the trees, lit by escaped tongues of flame.


	8. When It Rains

**Ugh, I'm too old for zits! They said once you weren't a teenager, zits would go away. Well I'm 25 and they're still here. What the fwoop is going on?**

Chapter 7

Since Naru continued to be reluctant to let go of me, I compromised with a piggy back ride. A thin, soaked yukata was not enough in autumn, especially since the clouds that had been threatening all day with rain blocked the sun. By the time we made it back to the inn a chilly wind had picked up, and I thought we'd never be warm again. The shivering had been so bad I had bitten my tongue several times, but at least I was still shivering, said Naru. Apparently hypothermia didn't get seriously dangerous until you stopped.

The fire had been put out at the inn. The weary firefighters insisted that we stay until they found out what had happened with the ambulance, but Naru didn't protest. Rather, he commanded that they move so we could get to our car. We were going home and nothing would stop him.

It was interesting for me to watch over Naru's shoulder as he glared down a man a foot taller and two feet wider aside from the passenger side door. The firefighter even opened it for him so he could settle me in like I had lost the use of my legs. With how hard I shook, I wouldn't be surprised if I had. A hotel employee ran out in time for Naru to accept one of their fluffy comforters and two dry yukatas.

"You got our contact information if you need to accuse us of crashing your ambulance," said Naru dryly as he stuffed the comforter around me.

"Of course not, sir, but your health-your wife's burns-"

Naru dropped into his seat and shut the door in his face. I watched with a frown as Naru had to try three times to get his shaking hands to put in the keys.

"M-m-mayb-be you s-s-shouldn't d-d-rive." Damn shivers! At this point I would have dived head first into the nearest hot spring if I wasn't more concerned about my husband's emotional wellbeing.

But he got the key in and the car backed out without crashing into the fire engine or anything else for that matter. As he got started down the road, he tried to turn the heater knobs higher, even though he had turned them on full blast before the car had even started. I thought I could hear his quick, erratic breathing above the chattering of my teeth. His lips had turned purpleish and his blue eyes had gone bright. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

"Naru?" I took a deep breath to calm my chattering. "Oliver...everything is going to be okay."

"Everything's not okay," he said. Sure, _he_ didn't stutter when he was shivering like mad. Was there anything he couldn't do? Wait, weren't his teeth chattering? If they weren't, why was he shaking? I reached out to touch his arm and felt nothing but ice.

"You're worse than me!" I cried. "You could at least have changed out of that wet yukata before we left-"

"I have to get you home," he said, voice hard, but thin as glass.

"Okay, but doesn't hypothermia affect how you think and your reflexes? It's not safe to drive when you're this cold." When he didn't respond, I tried a different approach. "I can cuddle with you naked."

"Mai, this isn't the time."

I flinched at the danger in his voice. "Okay, okay. But if you don't pull over and dress into something dry right now, I'm going to do something drastic that you won't like."

He let out an angry puff of air. "Can you at least wait until we're away from here?"

"And when will we be far away enough for you, huh?"

"The freeway."

"Where on the freeway?"

"MAI!"

I squawked in surprise and bit my tongue again. Whimpering in pain, I ducked down, startled by his sudden roar. Tears sprung to my eyes before I could register why they were even there. I didn't dare to say anything, even as we passed the dark plume that marked where the ambulance lay. Firefighters and other volunteers had already congregated about it like buzzards.

The long, country road ended at the highway, which lead up to the water park. In the other direction it would take us home. Naru pulled over onto the side and jerked the car into park. The heater had warmed up by then and the car was starting to feel like a wonderful sauna. He pushed back his seat and started to strip. For some reason, watching him helped me to stop crying. His body was awfully beautiful...

"You too," he said roughly, throwing the second dry yukata onto my fluff-covered lap. I only glanced down at it before returning to the Naru show. He had to lift his hips up to yank the yukata out from underneath him, which I found myself appreciating. I could do pervy things like this now. He was mine. Weird.

As he bent his shoulders forward to get the dry yukata about him, he caught me staring.

"Do I have to dress you?" he said, meaning it as a threat.

"Maybe," I said faintly. The desire to throw myself on top of him had reach to the point of pain. I wanted the comfort of his body more than ever. I wanted to forget.

He sighed. "Please, Mai, this isn't..." his voice cracked and he abruptly curled forward, as though in pain. "We have to get home."

Guilt doused my lust. "I-I'm sorry, I...frick." I kicked my way out of the comforter and got to tearing off my wet yukata and replacing it with the new one. Just as I pulled the dry one around my shoulders, Naru reached out a shaking, cold hand to my far side, brushing the palm of his hand across the side of my breast. Next thing I knew he was across the center console and kissing me, all shakes and desperate breaths through sobs trying to work themselves into being. He had to pull away to fight for breath.

"Oh, sweetness..." I gasped in dismay, bringing his head to my bare chest. "Sweetheart, darling, I'm okay. Everything's alright. You're doing just fine, everything is just fine."

He grasped my arms to brace himself as he struggled to calm down. He was shaking worse than ever and his breathing became shorter and shorter till I feared he'd simply pass out.

"Naru, Oliver, breathe, it's okay. You need to breathe."

Suddenly he jerked back to his seat, threw open the car door, and threw up onto the side of the street.

He hung their retching long after I was sure there was nothing left to throw up. Finally, he pulled himself back in, shut the door, and dropped his head onto the steering wheel. His face had gone snowy pale and his cheeks shone with tears.

"I'm okay," he said softly.

"Do you need me to drive?" I said, before changing it to. "Screw it, I'm driving."

"Like hell," he growled weakly. "Forget that it's illegal, have you ever even driven before? I'm fine now, I just...it was just a panic attack."

"A panic attack? Forgive me if I don't sound like I believe you."

"You don't have to believe me." He pulled the gear stick besides the car wheel back into drive and sat up, wiping at his face with a sleeve. "You're not driving."

His shaking had seemed to calm down somewhat, I noted, as he pulled back onto the road and turned onto the highway that would eventually take us to the freeway to Tokyo.

A few, big fat rain drops splashed onto the windshield. The clouds had finally decided to do what they had been threatening all afternoon.

I pulled my fluffy comforter cocoon about me as I watched them blur the trees and the yellow lines in the road ahead with water. "You think they'll let us keep this? Fluffy blankets are the best."

"She said we could," he said. "Our phones and wallets should be in there. They'll be shipping the rest of our stuff to us."

I padded about the comforter to find said phone and wallets and ended up finding them in the foot well. I brought them up, set them into the cup holders, and brought up my phone to distract myself with pictures of furniture that I would like to see in Naru's bland apartment-or rather, our apartment, but my fingers wouldn't move. I felt drained and exhausted. I couldn't believe it was only just reaching five o'clock.

Naru switched on the headlights.

Yawning, numb, not wanting to think of all that had just happened, I wrapped an arm around his and nuzzled my head against his arm. I let the scent of him melt the last pillar holding up my awareness, using the fluffy comforter to turn the center console into a pillow.

I didn't need to know what that thing was. I didn't even really care to.

And yet, the very moment I crossed over into unconsciousness, I found myself standing on an open road, not unlike the one Naru and I drove on now, bare foot and staring up into the sky as the rain fell in curtains all about me. I dimly wondered if the story about turkeys drowning themselves whenever it rained because they'd look up and stay like that was true.

I knew it was there before I heard the footsteps.

 _Get out of the water..._

It was my own voice that told me that, even as I clenched my eyes shut. I didn't want to drop my chin. I didn't want to see what came up to me through the rain. I was too tired of this. We just wanted to get home-I had to get Naru home. He couldn't take much more of this.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. Rain filled my mouth. "What do you want?"

 _Get out of the water..._

I couldn't close my eyes to it anymore, because they were open without my memory of opening them and staring straight forward at the tall being stretching up before me. Its long arms dragged along the ground, slim and lanky like the rest of its being. Its joints stood out, knobby and grotesque, and its shoulders slumped, allowing its head to loll before its chest. I couldn't make out if it had hair or if it was bald, because it didn't seem to really get to me that it was a head at all. Just a continuation of a face.

Which tilted up to me, long, long, long, a mouth gaping wider and wider.

Of course there was no head. It had just been a mouth all along, slim bright tongue dripping and broken teeth yellowing and sharp. It's eyes melted over its top lip like the nostrils of a snake's nose, staring at me with uncanny intensity.

 _Get out of the water!_

It's top tipped down, bringing that mouth over me like an alien saucer readying to beam me up. Rancid saliva dripped down in place of the rain it's figure blocked.

The mouth came down.


	9. Hydro Plane

**O.O I'm going to go see the Yugioh movie tonight...*screams and foams* Seto Kaiba on the big screen...haaaannnnnngggh**

Chapter 8

I woke up with a cry.

"Get out of the water!"

Naru jerked and the car swerved on the road. He swore.

"For Pete's sake, Mai-" Then he slammed on the brakes.

For straight ahead of us, standing tall as a black and cream colored tree, was the slim creature, its mouth-head gaping to its navel.

The wheels lost traction. Water shot up in a wave. One wheel caught asphalt, bringing the car whiplashing around. Naru's arm came out to hold me against the seat.

A thud-crunch that spiked my ears, and we stopped. The car died. Mud had splattered up half the windshield along with a splatter of dead leaves and pine needles.

"It's here!" I shrieked. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god-"

"Mai-"

"Start the car-get out of the water-"

Rather than fight with my hysteria, he turned the keys and pumped the gas. The car hummed and spat, but didn't turn over. As the heavy rain beat back some of the mud, I saw the front of the Toyota crunched around a pine tree.

I started to hyperventilate. Why hadn't the air bags gone off? How come I didn't broken my face on the dashboard, or Naru on the steering wheel? Was this just another bad dream? _How would I know?_

"Mai Davis, calm down right now. Panicking never does anything."

"Why is it here?" I squeaked, my hands knotted up so tightly under my chin they popped. "From my dreams-the ambulance- _Naru-!_ "

"Breathe!"

He said it with such harsh, loud command, it shocked me into sucking in air more than anything. The spinning screaming in my head dimmed somewhat.

He he pulled out his phone from the cup holders and dialed. Instead of the emergency number, however, he pulled up Lin.

"Lin's too far away-" I started.

"No he isn't. I called him after the fire once someone would lend me a phone." I heard a click and Lin's low voice hmmed from the earpiece. "We've crashed. Something's after us, we just past mile marker twelve-"

A hand slapped on my window. I screamed, staring at the too-long, spindly fingers that nearly spanned the entire glass.

"Hurry!" cried Naru, even as I heard his phone give an unpleasant pop. "Damn it! How long has it been dead?"

Glass cracked. Another hand slapped on the windshield, also on my side of the car. They were knuckle-less, like tentacles, yet still uncannily human.

"It's after me!" I shrieked.

Naru unbuckled my seatbelt and tugged me over the center console even as long arms started bending into our vision. The windshield gave a sharp click and a several cracks appeared.

The glass on the passenger side fell in, fingers shooting towards me.

At the same time, Naru's hand flung out between me and it. The air became too thick to breathe and tense as static.

Glass shot up and out the door, along with the long arms, as though shoved out by a sudden gale of wind. I saw the rest of its long body shoot after its arms, its flesh the same texture and color of something that had died and bloated in the water.

Naru's PK. As if things couldn't get worse.

Naru pulled us out of the car and into the rain. We half ran, half tripped down the muddy slop and just missed crashing into a tree. Instead, a hand still gripped tightly to my wrist, Naru slingshot us around it to continue our fleeing tumble into the woods. I only breathed again when we reached something of even enough ground to run on, and then it was an all out sprint. Naru didn't let go of my wrist, no matter how cumbersome it made our escape. The rain lessened beneath the canopy, and twigs with fingers outstretched like claws snapped and snagged against our yukatas.

I couldn't hear it following over the crashing of our own feet and hearts.

I found myself dreading the moment Naru's heart would give out. He wasn't, under any circumstances, to use his PK. It was just too much for any body to handle, and in the time I had known him it had landed him in the hospital three times, two in which he nearly died as his heart stopped. This time, however, we were nowhere near a hospital and on the run through the woods. How much longer would he go before dropping?

Adrenaline pushed us deeper and deeper into the woods. Ferns and evergreen bushes filled the undergrowth, pushing us into zigzags and thickets of thorns. Only when my lungs felt as though they had simply caught fire and my legs weighed down with stones did Naru come to a stop and pulled me down into an earthy alcove made of the huge roots of a decaying oak. I would have never seen it if it hadn't been for him, as thick bushes covered the entrance and fern leaves draped over it like a curtain.

I heard mushrooms snap as I pressed my back against dirt and wood. Both of us panted heavily, our faces red.

"Do you feel it?" he gasped.

"Since when am I a monster detector?" But I closed my eyes anyways and tried to focus. I fought to quiet my breath, but all I could hear beyond it was the hush of rain on the leaves and my thundering heart. Even if I could, I doubt I could feel anything above my wild fear.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he hissed. "You?"

"You used your PK! Shouldn't your heart be giving out or something?" I opened my eyes to squint at him through the dim shadows. He gave me an odd look, then stared at something over my shoulder as he turned his attention inward. Then, he broke out in a crazy grin.

"I'm fine."

I scowled. "This isn't the time for your stupid pride-"

"It isn't my stupid pride. I feel just the same as before, albeit terrified and exhausted. There's no pain, no tingling." His eyes widened. "Back in the ambulance, you weren't the one who used PK. It was me."

"How do you not notice yourself using PK? I thought you were trained to, you know."

"That's the thing, it can slip out in situations like that-panic and/or survival mode. I only know because of how it leaves my body afterwards, but it didn't strain my body that time. I didn't feel anything, so I thought it was you." His hands were shaking and he let go of my hand at last to rub his fingers between one another, watching them, eyes bright. "And back in the car, when we crashed, I used my PK again to hold us back, without even thinking. And then again-"

While he was getting excited, I just got more scared. Four times in one day? It must be the adrenaline, it had to be, and the moment it wore out-even if Lin were able to find us by then, would there be any coming back for him?

The mouth beast behind us suddenly seemed like nothing.

Naru was still babbling. I didn't know how much he had said I had failed to register. I reached for him, trembling.

"No. No, you should have...Naru..."

He snapped quiet and looked at me, his excitement clouding over with concern. "It's okay, Mai, I'm not dying. Well, as long as that thing doesn't find us, that is. Didn't you hear me?"

Thick, fat tears bubbled up in my eyes and lost themselves in the rainwater on my face. "I can't-I can't live if you-you can't die, please don't..." My throat twisted to tight for words.

He hushed me, wiping the tears and rain from my cheeks and pulled me to his still heaving chest. I could hear his heart thudding strong and quick.

"Listen this time. My PK became too much for me when my brother died. Because of the psychic bond we have and because we were identical twins there were two bodies to handle the brunt of both of our psychic abilities, though mainly mine, being the most destructive of the two. When he died I lost that buffer and my body couldn't handle it alone. I think-I think we've created a new bond that's allowed some of it to bleed over onto you. I think...I think because you share similar abilities to Gene, and because of...Lord, I think it might be because we had sex."

I jerked back and stared at him. "What?"

"Sex reaches all the levels of a human being-emotional, physical, mental, even _psychic._ I think because we made that bond-"

"So because we had sex?" I so wasn't sold on this.

"Well, it's a lot more than that, I probably couldn't just have sex with anyone and have it work, and there's no saying how permanent it is," he was growing excited again. "Granted I can't just throw around PK whenever I want because there's not saying what will happen if the bond fades-"

"Like if we don't have sex enough," I said wryly, dead panned.

His express fell into a scowl. "I thought you wanted me to live?"

"Of course I do!" I cried, offended. "But shouldn't we be staying quiet so that thing doesn't find us? Or better yet, figuring out what the hell it is and why it's been trying to kill us?"

Frowning, he leaned back into the earthen wall. I heard more mushrooms crack and though of centipedes crawling down my shirt.

Naru fingered his chin, pulling up a knee into his thinking mode. "You said 'get out of the water' at the hotel too. It wouldn't be a far stretch to think the accident at the water park might have been because of it."

I sighed. "It was. For some reason all the water turned to blood-at least, it did in my eyes. I could even smell it and taste it."

He gave me the look I knew he would once I revealed that I had failed to mention that little detail, but, luckily, he chose to fight with me over it later.

"And the ambulance got into a wreck right next to the river, after passing over it, even. I don't know if you noticed, but we spun off the road when we hit a passing flood of water. As far as I can see, all of the accidents have occurred around bodies of water."

"What about the rain?" I asked hesitantly.

"If it could get us just because of rain it wouldn't have had to wait for the ambulance to pass over the river or for us to hit that floodwater." He leaned forward and peaked his head through the foliage. After a moment, he dropped back down next to me. "I don't hear or see any bodies of water nearby, and even the rain is blocked off somewhat by the trees. It's hardly even damp in here yet. It's possible we're safe, for the time being."

But there was just a few things that didn't mix up.

"What about when we almost hit that guy-I think it was it-on the road to the hotel?"

"We must have been passing over the river."

"Then what about when we got lost in the woods? Unless that's unconnected to this."

Naru went quiet, his chin dimpling with his frown. The quiet between us pressed on, filling with heavy unknowns and doubts. All the while I kept my senses peeled and alert for signs of pursuit. My heart never settled, keeping up its wild dance against my breastbone.

At last, he spoke up.

"The most important question now is whether or not that thing will leave us alone once we get out of these mountains."


	10. I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain

***Sigh* Again, I'm sorry this is late. This really is unusual for me, but the reasons are the same song, second verse. Anxiety disorder sucks butt. And for some reason my toddler keeps walking circles around me as I'm writing this note and farting...**

 **Anyways, I'm sorry if this chapter seems more like a drug trip than an actual chapter. I was trying to recreate the cool down process of what it's like for someone after something really traumatic like that has happened.**

 **I'll stop stressing now and just let you read.**

Chapter 9

If we got out of the mountains, that is.

Because not only were Naru and more or less trapped to our dry little alcove under some tree roots and ferns to avoid the rain, but we were once more in nothing but wet yukatas, and autumn isn't exactly known for its warm temperatures.

He tucked me close to him so he could wrap both his legs and arms around me. We had already done our best to squeeze out the water from our hair and clothes. Still we shivered, hard. To make matters worse, night was closing in, darkening the sky and turning the shadows of our hiding spot nearly pitch black. A high, whistling wind started up, clacking the branches above us.

We both knew we couldn't stay.

"Th-there's the b-b-blanket back in the car," I said through chattering teeth.

"Said car also has a broken window and a flood next to it." How he managed to speak without the interference of his chattering was beyond me.

"I-I-It would-d-d m-make it easier t-to find us. For Lin, th-th-that is. He should be get-t-t-ting there by now."

"Which is why we should stay put. It would be easier for him and his shiki to find us if we stay put, so just stop talking. You're going to bite off your tongue."

Groaning inwardly, I tucked my face beneath the cloth of his open yukata, pressing my burnt cheek against his chest. His heart beat quickly beneath my ear, probably frantic to create more heat through sheer exertion.

My head hurt.

As time passed and the world grew darker, the shelter of the ferns and tree branches failed as the rain turned to a deluge, dripping big, fat drops from their leaves onto us. Next thing I knew I was adjusting my leg and finding mud stuck to my shin like clay. If that wasn't enough to turn this into the worst day of my life, I had already brushed off several unseen creepy crawlies from my skin and from beneath my yukata. My toes and most of my feet had gone numb from cold. The only reason my hands hadn't was because I had tucked them up into Naru's armpits.

"N-N-Na-a-ru," I whined.

He gave me a squeeze. "He'll find us."

But it hadn't been Lin I had been thinking about. Every second more water was slipping down into our alcove, soaking into the earth. I felt a small, newborn stream slide past my ankle.

Just how much water did the monster need?

My fear started to build. My muscles couldn't tense anymore than they already had, nor could my prickled hairs go any higher for the cold. There was no running for me, now, on feet numbed by cold. I was sure to stumble on something, if my legs managed to unbuckle from their position.

As tiny whimpers started eking their way out from my clamped throat, Naru ducked his head against my own and breathed warmth onto the back of my neck. But he must have sensed something as well, for he said nothing.

A branch cracked in the distance and fell with a hollow thud. We both jumped. He held me tighter.

"Just the storm," he whispered.

I hardly heard him. An irrational fear had stiffened up like a startled cobra along my back. I started to hyperventilate.

"Getdddout of-GEdddout-" I couldn't get it out. Water, water all around me.

Naru's arms around me tensed till they felt like stone. A familiar pressure started to push at my skin, prickling, pressing against me like a solid wind.

"Did you know," he whispered, even as he lifted his shaking arm from my back. "That high levels of PK result in pyrokenesis?"

A snap, and light burst into my vision. Flame spluttered and hissed besides us in the alcove, fighting to feed on the damp twigs pressed into the mud. I could feel its warmth, and yet, oddly, I grew colder...and colder.

"Stop!" I cried, but it came out weak. The shadows around me were growing deeper, looming like a great maw leaning closer and closer.

"I'm okay, Mai. If I can just get the fire to catch, maybe-"

I blacked out.

I must have not been out long, because when I came to I was still cold, wet, and the sound of rain on leaves told me I hadn't left the alcove.

Naru was shaking me, calling my name. His limbs had, if possible, tightened even more on me. I barely had the breath to speak.

"I'm here."

"You went limp, did I-what happened? Are you okay? Crud, this isn't the time to experiment, you're..." he trailed off with whistled breaths through his nostrils.

There was a crack of twigs and a light burst down from us like a beam from heaven.

"Naru! Mai!"

I had never been more happy to hear Lin's voice in my life. I started to cry.

I don't know how Naru managed it, because he had to be just as cold as me, but he lifted me up to Lin, who stood on the top of the alcove, and took the flashlight from him. Occasionally a film or streak of light, or more like the afterimage of light, slipped past the corners of my eyes. Lin's shiki.

Lin took off his heavy trench coat and wrapped me up in it. Him being twice my size, it swallowed me.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I'm still not entirely sure myself," said Naru, grunting as he lifted himself out. "Some monster that Mai recognized from her dream appeared in front of us in the road. It's nothing like I've ever seen, and I don't think it's just a spirit. We think its somehow connected to the water, though."

Lin's hmm rumbled through his chest against my ear. It reminded me of a lion purring, and I let my eyes droop. I was safe now. Lin would keep me safe.

"Why attack you?" Lin asked. "And where are your shoes?"

"Kind of hard to run through the forest with complimentary thongs. I'll be fine. Did you get anything about the history of the property? Damn it, stupid tree-anyways, I thought my father would have bothered to look through it, he always does."

"He did. There's nothing. No record of strange murders, violent events, nothing. The springs were dug out of the mountain, so they weren't even around before the Edo period."

"So no written record that could be connected with a death and the water?"

"More research could prove something."

"It's difficult to out-research that man."

As Naru went on to describe the beast to Lin in hopes he had heard of anything like it, my awareness wandered off, drowsy and spent. Though I was still cold, it somehow seemed a distant sensation, as though it were happening to someone else. I drifted past trains of thought that didn't relate, but somehow all came back down to the long arms and gaping mouth and slits of eyes for the lack of a head.

 _What did it want?_

Bloody water. The ambulance on fire. Our room in flames.

"Fire," I muttered.

I didn't think they heard me, but then I couldn't bring myself to care. The things ability to start fires wouldn't have anything to do with its ability to somehow always appear over a stream or something. Why else would that phrase 'get out of the water!' keep popping into my head?

An uneasy stirring passed through me. I had the tickling sensation as though somewhere, a friend I trusted was talking bad about me behind my back.

"Mai, wake up."

We were in a car I vaguely recognized as Lin's, only because everything was black leather and it smelled of cheap vanilla air fresheners. I was still wrapped tightly in Lin's coat. I could hear the car's fan blasting warm air into the car and the rush of water beneath its wheels.

"Where are we going?" Ah, that's nice. I could talk again. So sleepy.

"Try to stay awake until I warm you up. You've stopped shivering, but you're still like ice."

But I was safe, wasn't I? Wrapped up in Lin's coat, in Naru's arm, in a car zipping down the freeway.

The words of the only song I'd probably ever hear Naru sing passed through my mind: _you've got a fast car..._

I drifted through the hot springs, eagerly stepping in and waiting for the hot water to warm me up, though it didn't reach down to the core. Fog surrounded me, and a lanky, long-armed figure made a silhouette.

 _I've got a ticket to anywhere, maybe we can make a deal._

Naru really wasn't that bad at singing. Course his OCD, got-to-be-perfect-at-everything nature sort of stopped him from sounding truly awful, but he wasn't tone deaf. Maybe it was just because it was Naru who was singing that I thought that. Maybe he did sound bad.

 _I had a feeling that I could be someone...you got a fast car._

I woke up when someone shut the car door. Someone was holding me.

"Naru, let me take her."

"I'm fine. If you want to help, go start a hot bath."

"You shouldn't have let her fall asleep."

"What was I suppose to do, slap her? She's out of the cold anyways. She'll be fine."

 _And I-ee-I had a feeling that I belonged..._

I half breathed a giggle. Okay, Naru had sounded funny when he had sung that part. The 'I-ee-I.' So sad that I would never be able to hear it again, especially if he so much as suspected that I was laughing at him.

Next thing I knew I was waking up with a start as someone peeled back my wet, warm cocoon.

"Let go, Mai. Lin needs his coat back."

I blinked back to awareness and let go of the coat, allowing myself to plop onto the cold tile floor. I started shuddering again in earnest. The big ivory bath tub was only half full. I blinked again when I realized that my husband, who was peeling me out of my wet yukata like a banana, was naked. When had I missed that?

"What are you...?"

He gave me a wan smile. "I'm cold too, you know."

"Yes, but..." I flushed, just a bit overwhelmed. My sleepy brain couldn't quite manage the shock of his deliciousness, and a few days of marriage weren't going to help that. And I still couldn't quite get my limbs to work.

So I didn't stop him when he picked me up and stepped into the half filled tub with me. Some water splooshed over the edge and onto the floor.

"Ah, this brings back memories," he said, almost dreamily.

"Of getting possessed in an old hospital?" Mmm, naked Naru. And oh, warm water. The heat was just about...oh yeah. Being lost in the forest was almost worth this.

Everything really was better now. We were going to be okay. All safe.

"And everyone finding us in a tub together, yes." He idly scooped up hot water to pour over my back. I had ended up sunk between his legs and cuddled against his chest. Noticing this made me realize for the first time how much larger his tub was compared to mine. It could actually fit two people comfortably.

We lay there like that for some time, and I drifted out of another doze whenever Naru shifted or when he put some shampoo into my hair.

"This is not the time for me to be turned on by this," he muttered.

"Home," I mumbled. I had meant to tell him we were home and safe so screw whatever the heck that was, I didn't care. Oh well.

"If it's connected to the spring, someone else could be in danger. If it's connected to us..." he shifted again and I made a little mewl of protest. I was finally warm and he kept waking me up.

"Come on, Mai. Being in a tub of water isn't the best thing until we know. Besides, this is starting to get uncomfortable."

But nice hot water. _Fire._

"Mai?"

I didn't hear what he had to say next. The darkness of my sleep, which I had been skimming over the surface, rose up and I sank down like a rock through deep waters...to father.

Father had died when I was very young, so I couldn't quite remember his face, which was probably why it took me a moment to recognize the man who walked through the front door. Mother giving him a big hug was a good hint. Shrugging it off, I went back to my play, which consisted of a little Tupperware of marbles and a jar. Each marble landed inside with a satisfyingly loud clink. I tried to see how many I could pour in at once, but most of them would just spill around the narrow neck of the bottle and onto the floor, where I'd spend the next five minutes hunting through the carpet for the glint of sunlight through glass balls.

Father picked me up from my hunt and hugged me. He smelled like fire, or rather, like smoke. His arms were shaking, which confused me. He was so much bigger than me. Why would he have a hard time carrying me? Was I that heavy?

"You're not heavy," he said, though I couldn't remember what his voice had sounded like. "I'm sorry Daddy's stinky. Just let me hold you a bit longer and I'll go shower."

Did Daddy get in a fire? Did he go camping? Why didn't he take me?

When he put me down, I had the vague feeling that I had missed something very big. Children, although innocent and sometimes naive, are far from blind and more sensitive than they're given credit for. I thought he might drop me, his arms shook so bad. Mother was going with him to the bathroom, saying something with her tone too high.

A glass marble with a yellow swirl in it had been pressed into the carpet by his foot. I stared at it until it faded out and I found myself once more on the cold bathroom floor, held up by Naru's arms.

"Damn it, will you please stop doing that to me!"

Which annoyed me. "Like I choose when I...wait, what?"

He put a hand over his brow, blocking his eyes, taking a deep breath. He was still very much naked, though he had covered me with a towel.

"Just...forget it. Let's just get to bed. I'm done with today. So done."


	11. In Sickness and In Health

**I have a problem with nightmares. I get them all the time, and sometimes I'll have entire nights full of them. Last night was one of those nights. I wonder if that means I can relate to Mai in a way. Too bad half of them are too horrible to put in a story. I've put some into these stories, though. Or, at least, the idea of the nightmare. I wonder if you guys can pick them out. They're not obvious. But I have three main themes to my nightmares. I rarely get any outside of those three themes.**

 **So, to those of you who have read my entire series, or even managed to get a hold of my previous 7-book series, got any guesses as to what those three themes are?**

Chapter 10

My dreams were replays of my father coming home and giving me smoky hugs. Deja vu glittered along with the marbles in the carpet, but rarely did anything new come to me. It was probably the only memory I had of him, besides the funeral.

And I dreamed of that too: walls of black and white stripes. The incense burning a sharp reminder to me of his fiery scent. Dad didn't smoke. Nor was he a fire fighter.

No. My father had been the average run of the mill police officer. He even still had the nickname 'rookie' by his other co-workers, as he hadn't yet to complete his first year in the field.

I woke up burning with regret that I hadn't asked my mother more.

The throbbing headache and the belly deep cough put a damper on that and woke Naru, who was surprisingly still naked under the covers. He reached a hand over to my forehead.

"That's definitely warmish," he muttered, then put a hand to his mouth to cover a cough. Smiling, I reached over to feel his own forehead, but my hand was so warm I couldn't much tell the difference.

"Look at us sickies," I said.

"Guess that's to be suspected." He gave a louder cough, made a little noise of fatigue, and curled his arm back under the covers, where it found its way over to my waist. I hadn't bothered dressing the night before either. His head followed as he hid away from the sunlight creeping through the blinds of his-now our-bedroom and tucked his head up beneath my breasts.

"I dreamed of my dad all night," I told him, feeling out his head to run my fingers through his messy hair.

"Those kinds of dreams?" he asked, voice muffled under the blankets and humming against my breast bone.

"With how insistent they were, hard to think they're anything else, especially given how random all this is." I tried to hold in a cough so my diaphragm wouldn't beat Naru's head off. I tried to tell him about the memory and my thoughts of fire, but I didn't know how much he heard as he started doing things under there that were very nonconstructive to intelligent conversation.

Yeah, we both felt like crap. But apparently not bad enough to stop from being frisky.

We came out coughing and dressed in sweats and big t-shirts to find Lin sitting at the couch, sipping a cup of coffee. While my feverish face just got hotter (we hadn't been exactly quiet), Naru looked unsurprised, which was unexpected coming from the guy who had just about freaked out whenever I said the word 'sex' when we had started dating. Maybe he didn't think Lin heard anything or knew something I didn't.

"I asked him to stay," he told me.

I gave him my best glare of 'and you didn't tell me before you seduced me?'

"And good thing," said Lin in his usual flat, quiet way. "Something tried to get in last night. It didn't leave until the storm broke up, which was sometime after sunrise."

"That's not encouraging," said Naru, who shuffled to the kitchen to open up the cupboard above the fridge. Achy, and feeling just a tad bit nauseous, I went to curl up in the sitting chair, but Lin stood up and pointed me to the couch. He even slid into the sitting chair before I could to make sure his offer would be taken. I sighed, and curled up there instead, shivering. I was of half a mind just to go back to bed.

"Most supernatural activities cease come sunrise, right?" I asked.

"How astute of you," said Naru dryly.

"Hey, you better be treating me like the queen of Sheba, I am your wife and you just brought me back from a god awful honeymoon."

"Well, your highness," a glass of grape juice and a bottle of pills appeared in front of my face, held by Naru from behind the couch. "I have brought your tonic and wine."

"Did you just crack a joke?" But I took his offering with a smile.

"I've cracked jokes before."

"You mean that ever present sarcasm that's your native language? That's hardly witty." I broke off with a cough and had to wait for it to pass before I downed the medicine.

"You should probably rest," said Naru to Lin. "You look pale. And if you say it's gone, we'll be fine."

Lin nodded and stood, his eyes out the wall of ceiling to floor windows (my favorite part about moving in with Naru). The windows of the building across from us gleamed like mirrors in the late morning sunlight. "If it starts to get cloudy, wake me up."

Naru nodded in assent and Lin left to...our bedroom.

"He's not going to smell anything weird, is he?" I whispered over the rim of my cup.

Naru snorted. "Like what? We cleaned up."

"He probably heard us."

I didn't need to say that, because Naru's ears had gone red on the mention of 'smelling' things. They got even redder as I said that. Guess he didn't know something I didn't. Did he really just not think about whether Lin heard us or not?

When he didn't answer, I gave a sore-throated, sickly cackle, which earned me one of his usual glares.

As I sipped grape juice, waiting for the medicine to kick in, Lin brought me out a blanket, which I thanked him profusely for, before returning to the bedroom and closing the door behind him. Naru had gotten out a pot and was currently digging some tofu and seaweed out of the fridge. He coughed now and then.

"I can cook," I said.

"The Queen doesn't cook," he said, a bit hoarse on the edges.

"Yeah, that sounded not-sick."

"If you're going to feel guilty, then make the tea. You're good at that."

So I slipped off my bed of sickliness and stood. I had to catch myself on the armrest as the blood rushed down to my legs, giving my head an extra, sickly throb and my stomach a turn.

The kitchen was just behind the couch, so Naru didn't have far to reach to push me down onto the sofa. I didn't know whether to thank him or not, as I was wondering if I might throw up, though the nausea calmed down once my vision returned.

"Sit," he said.

"If you had just waited for my blood to fill back in-"

"Do it for me, okay? I've had a rather horrid night."

The memory of him hyperventilating and puking on the side of the road returned to me. Had all that really been yesterday?

I shot up. Before he could stop me I had the teapot in the sink and filling with water. I met his displeased look with one of my own.

"You're not the only one who wants to take care of their spouse," I said, just daring him to argue back.

He didn't. Smart man. That, or a tired, sick man.

He made a simple miso soup with microwaved left-over rice, and I a creamy lavender and chamomile mix with drops of honey in each. Rather than sit on the stools at the counter, we used his coffee table as a kotasu and ate with our feet pressed together for warmth. Both of us were shivering, despite the thermometer displaying a comfortable seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit

"At least we know it's not a site bound spirit," I said conversationally.

"A personal haunting isn't much better," said Naru. "Did your father have any talents like you? Even maybe a suspicion of having a sixth sense?"

"If he did, it'd probably be written in my mom's diary." I finished off the last of my soup and climbed back into my nest on the couch.

"Have you never read it?"

"Frankly, I've never really wanted to. She didn't have an easy life and I wasn't attracted to the idea of revisiting all her suffering, especially where it had to do with taking care of me. Hand me my tea, would you?"

He did so, and I gave a happy little chirp as I nestled down with its warmth in my hands. My running nose was just clear enough to smell it.

"You do still have it, though, right?" he asked.

"Of course. Should be in the box with all the rest of my books. Think we should call the others over? Lin isn't exactly the best at warding magic. He's more of a...I dunno, go get'm type."

"Probably." A heavy cough cut him off. Once it had passed, he cussed. "For once in my life, I wish someone else would solve a case."

"Yeah," I said, taking a sip of my tea.

"I just want to sleep the day away. I feel like crap."

"I don't want to read all my mother's seven diaries just to see if my dad had ESP. My eyes won't stop watering."

"Maybe we could pay them..."

"You mean more than you already do?"

"I _would_ be the client. And it isn't like you could feel guilty for not helping, you'd be sleeping. You get the best clues in your dreams."

I flopped a hand at him lazily to point at him, swallowing my gulp of tea. "That, right there, is a nummy idea. Yasu could read through all her diaries. He's good at research crap like that. And it's in the name of saving us from a mostly-mouth monster from hell, so I don't think my mom would mind...too much."

"If she comes back to haunt you," he said with a ghost of a smile. "You got your phone on you?"

I didn't, so he did plenty of groaning and coughing as he slugged about the house to find his. Once found, he took up the end of the couch to do his calls, which meant I could dig my feet under his thighs for warmth.

The cold medicine must have kicked in around that time, for an overwhelming drowsiness came over me. I dozed off, half-formed feverish dreams popping up. The coughing even subsided enough to allow me to slip further and further down. Naru's voice fell into comforting background noise.

I woke up a bit when I felt him sidling up to me so his body was between me and the back of the couch. His arms wrapped about me like I was a big teddy bear and he nuzzled into my hair. I sleepily situated the big blanket so it covered both of us before going out once more.

Maybe being sick wasn't so bad.

Both of us had forgotten to keep a look out for clouds, though none must have appeared, or the spirit too worn out, for I woke up, not to a monster in my face, but Yasu accidentally dropping some of my books as he was unloading a box. On meeting my eyes, he winced.

"Sorry, Mai. I tried to be quiet."

I blinked blearily at him, one of my eyelids a bit more sticker than the other. I blinked to the grimacing Takigawa in the room, as well as a pursed lipped Ayako who was glaring at Yasu. She sighed, and came around the coffee table to the couch, where she knelt down and put a hand to my head.

"Good lord," she muttered, then reached behind me. Only then did I remember that I was being spooned and cuddled with everyone of Naru's limbs. I heard a deep, hoarse breathing. "He isn't much better. At least he seems to be a heavier sleeper. Who'd've thought?"

"He isn't," I said, frowning. "Naru?"

He groaned and hugged me tighter. "Or maybe I don't want to grace the world with my attention. Let me sleep." He grumbled something about Yasu and shifted his face against my hair.

Ayako put a hand over her mouth to hold in the giggle, though not to hide her China sized smirk.

"Goodness, I've never seen Naru so unabashed. This needs pictures, but first, have you taken anything yet?"

I told her the cold medicine and where to find it, and my best guess to when we had taken it. She snorted, called Naru an idiot when it came to pharmaceuticals, and came over with some Tylenol and something else, along with a glass of milk.

"Milk isn't the best for phlegm, but you mentioned you had some nausea. Grape juice and miso soup are kind of acidic, so you need something to balance that out."

Now that she reminded me, I did feel pretty sick in the stomach too. I groaned as she held out the pills and cup to me. I didn't want to sit up. That required effort.

But Naru moved his leg off my calves and his arm around my waist (which were hidden under the blanket, but Ayako's smirk grew anyways), so I sighed-which ended up in a cough-and sat up. The milk was wonderfully cool down my throat. I hadn't realized how thirsty I was until then.

"Yeah, that's sort of indicative of a fever," said Ayako. "I'll make you some ice tea. It's easier on the stomach than water."

"You're so good at this stuff," I mumbled, probably giving her a dopy smile. It was kind of hard to focus. I kept drifting off between the banging mallets behind my eyes and the gray world outside. It would be so nice if it rained. Cuddling with Naru under a blanket while water rushed down those big windows.

"What do the journals look like again, Mai?"

"Green." I coughed. "Don't touch the polka dots or stripes."

"Why?" He waved a particularly girly looking striped one up, complete with one of those cheap little locks that never worked anyways. "Are these yours? I wonder what saucy secrets are inside."

"The saucy secrets of your death," I rasped, having finished off another cough.

Yasu gave a low whistle. "That sounds way more threatening with that sick Vader voice of yours. Alright." He dropped the book in the box. "It's probably just full of gushy Naru daydreams anyways."

"Yasu," said a low, dangerous rumble from behind me. "You're on a job, and your client is trying to sleep."

With that, he tugged on the back of my shirt to urge me back down, threw the blanket back over me along with his arm and leg. The world swung and teetered a bit from just that movement, and I watched it still as the first rain drop splattered against the window like a big bug on a windshield. I didn't like it. But I liked rain. I was just thinking how nice it would be.

"It likes water," I mumbled.

Takigawa glanced up from where he was looking through the books with Yasu and followed my gaze to the window. He muttered a low curse and got up.

"I totally forgot the wards in the car. Just hold on tight, Mai-chan, I'll hurry."

Ayako snorted from behind us in the kitchen. "Good going, dumb ass, forgetting the whole reason we came here."

Naru let out dog-like grunt. "You're all fired."

Man, my head hurt. When was the last time I'd been this sick? Did it always make your eyeballs feel like they had swollen in your head?

Something large and wet slop-smacked against the window. Everyone in the room jumped, and Naru bolted upright, his arm on my waist going down to the couch to brace himself protectively over me.

But there was nothing there. Just water, as more raindrops had crowded in to join the first.

"Frick, already?" said Yasu, who had gone a bit paler than usual.

"Get Lin," grunted Naru.


	12. Shifting Vision

**I'm really irritated with myself for being so slow with this story. I mean, come on, how annoying is that having to wait forever for an author to update a story you're reading? So my goal is to finish up Slim this week. ^.^ So far one person has guessed one of my reoccurring nightmares: vomiting.**

Chapter 11

Yasu nearly tripped over more books in his hurry to the small hallway. I heard him curse as the first door he opened turned out to be the bathroom, then his call for Lin.

Meanwhile, I stared at the wall of windows. It didn't seem like such a cool idea now to live with an entire side of your home made of glass, though how was I to expect that anything, supernatural or otherwise, would be able to make it to the twenty-fourth story?

And then _it_ was there, as though it had been the whole time and I simply had to turn my head the right way to see it; long arms slithering against the window like the underbellies of slugs, and the great maw pressed up to the glass, all dark red flesh, black gums, and serrated, alien teeth, set within a human torso. It's flesh was a patchwork of black and pale skin, intermingled with hunks of charred flesh.

I recoiled back against Naru, my own scream piercing through my skull, though it couldn't have been very loud since I had so little breath to begin with. At the same moment, Ayako cried out and a soft roar, like a loud sigh, came from the kitchen.

Naru all but caged me into the sofa with his limbs.

"Where?" he asked, and the air pushed out from him in steady waves, brushing over me.

But I couldn't speak. My lungs seemed to have forgotten how to breathe in.

For watching the teeth grinding against the window, I realized they weren't teeth, but the jagged edges of a split open rib cage, somehow half healed into something resembling a mouth. The pair of slitted eyes I had seen before perched above the maw were actually two spots in the charred flesh where the collarbone showed through. A purple-brown stomach and liver licked against the glass like some sick version of a tongue.

And it wanted me. I could feel it, just as I had in my dream, that desperate hunger of a predator.

My lungs snapped back open in a gasp. I tasted smoke.

Ayako was furiously slapping at something with a rag.

"Idiot!" cried Yui. I couldn't see him, my eyes riveted on the malformed thing slobbering on the window, but I heard him tromp into the kitchen and switch on the faucet.

"What are you seeing, Mai?" Naru asked, more firmly.

There was no way to describe it. The way its arms slunk and stuck to the window, stretching as though made of rubber, I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the bones within and how they had change with the twisted version of healing that had occurred to the torso.

"It wants to eat me," I heard myself squeak.

More slapping of a rag, this time it was wet.

"Lin, it's here."

"Your kitchen is on fire-"

A pop-crack-and a spidery line appeared from one corner of a window to the other. Yasu let out a little cry.

And Lin was back around the sofa between me and the creature, two fingers raised to his mouth. With the majority of its body hiddem from me, I somehow lost sight of its arms, as though I had shifted the wrong way again, and the gray-light coming through the glass filled in around Lin.

Lin whistled. I cringed, my feverish head protesting against the noise. My heart had abandoned beating to fly up somewhere in my throat, humming like a bird.

"It's going to eat me!"

"Mai, Lin kept it out all night. You'll be fine."

"Literally eat me," I insisted, my view blurring and my head spinning. I had ducked my head down and all I could see was the dark leather of Naru's sofa and his sleeve. I couldn't breathe.

It's mangled ribbed teeth wanted to tear me apart. My flesh would pool around its organs, soaking its innards with my blood. It wanted that. It yearned, desperately, with a soul deep lust thick enough for me to smell, to devour me in its twisted, malformed way.

A space of time moved past without me noticing. A few minutes, most likely, but what felt like days, with Naru over me protectively and white streaks of shiki occasionally flashing just out of the range of my sight. I kept tasting the smoke, a sharp, tangy kind, like what you get when leftover food on the burner catches fire.

When the heat of Naru's body moved off me, I curled in on myself, finding myself vulnerable and revealed.

"Mai-chan, it's okay. I got some seals up on the walls, nothing's coming in."

Takigawa had returned. Big, familiar hands fluttered over my shoulders, attempting to coax my arms from my legs.

I could still feel Naru behind me, but he had sat up.

"Mai," he said. "Is it gone? Can you see it?"

I turned my head towards the window, more out of reflex than actually desire. Takigawa's brotherly face filled my vision, a few days worth of dark stubble on his chin contrasting with his lighter colored hair. About his head, almost like a halo, was the gray light, and beyond it, what little of the window I could see. I sort of...moved my vision without moving my head, though I could have, I couldn't tell, and then I could see it. The hands, spread-eagle like deformed spiders, flinching back from the glass.

"It's still there," I managed. "But I don't think it can get in." I turned my attention back to Takigawa and the hands disappeared. It had hurt my head worse than ever to look at the thing. I met the monk's eyes, counted the furrows in his still young brow, and without warning, became overwhelmed with tears. "I'm never going to be able to leave this house again."

"Now, that's not true," said Takigawa, one of those big hands ruffling in my hair, but softly so as to not tug the tangles. "I'm here now, and I won't leave until it's gone too. You're friends aren't going to let you down, so you just focus on getting better, alright?"

"It's going to eat me," I sobbed.

"I bet you'd taste like strawberries," said Naru, his dry tone almost surprising me, but not as much as Takigawa's bark of laughter, which shattered the threatening gloom like glass.

"You would know, wouldn't you, Naru?"

"Just because you dragged me to a bar does not give you license to crack innuendoes at me."

"Yeah. Getting married does. You're all grown up! Innuendoes are part of the deal."

Naru snorted, which turned into a cough. As it dragged on, his shuddering behind me managed to draw away the worst of my terror as my concern left me and turned to him.

Takigawa's smile melted back to a frown. "You sound awful."

"Hey, Captain Obvious," said Ayako from behind us. "Come check this out."

Takigawa stood and walked around. When Monk made a little noise of surprise, Naru scrambled over me and to the floor.

"What is it?" he asked, wobbling as he stood. Lin caught him by one arm, half of his attention still to the window.

"That random fire that started up where I was warming up your tea," said Ayako. "Come look at the burn marks. Wouldn't a stove fire just, you know, burn sort of in a circle from the burner?"

"It's all in a straight line," said Takigawa, sounding more awed than impressed. "Going towards the couch."

Naru made his way to the kitchen to see for himself. I didn't bother moving. I felt too heavy, too achy, too tired and bare and scared. I just wanted to curl up in the bathtub, like you're suppose to in the case of a tornado, and wait out the storm.

"I don't know of any spirit that can have something to do with water _and_ fire. It's just an impossibility, one always cancels out the other," said Takigawa.

"Never say never," said Ayako.

"This obviously isn't an ordinary spirit. I would find this a lot more interesting if it weren't for the circumstances," said Naru. "I-" A cough broke him off, growing into a deep, chest thrumming bark.

"Alright, get to bed before you die," said Yasu. "Both of you. Probably best for you to get away from the window and the water. The bedroom just has a small window, right? If fire cancels out water based spirits, maybe we could, I don't know, set up a candle in it."

A stunned silence followed this.

Yasu sighed. "Really? My amazing intellect catches you off guard after all these years?"

"I'm just surprised I hadn't thought of that," said Takigawa.

"Fire..." murmured Naru hoarsely, probably remembering at least part of the dreams I had had.

The part of my brain not cowering in an imaginary tub in a locked, dark bathroom started spinning along the same train of thought he must have found. In almost each case where we had encountered the spirit, there had been fire.

 _Stay out of the water..._

It was almost a whisper now, or rather, I could barely hear it above the racket my headache was giving me. My ears had started to ring.

"No candle," said Lin dryly.

"How come? It's a good idea?" said Ayako.

"Those two were nearly killed by a fire at the hotel, and their ambulance also went up in flames," said Lin. "It isn't exactly friendly, is it?"

"Kind of hard for fire to be cuddly," said Takigawa, sounding a little miffed, but he had reappeared in my vision and crouched down to me. "Need some help?"

I just blinked through the tears at him. Oh man, I felt awful.

His expression twisted with pity. "Poor Mai-chan."

Takigawa easily scooped me up from the sofa, blanket and all, and cradled me against his chest as he carried me back into the bedroom. I dozed off nearly as soon as I hit the mattress and was awoken by Ayako handing me a cold glass.

"Wow, you fell asleep sitting straight up. Here, the tea I promised."

I inhaled it hungrily, nearly dozing off again part way through like an infant with a bottle. She took the glass from me and I wiggled down into a more comfortable lying position. Under the blankets I brushed against Naru's arms and one snaked over my waist and pulled me close.

"So cute," said Ayako.

I drifted. The cool aftertaste of tea blocked out the tang of smoke. Rain pattered against the bedroom window.

My face pressed against my father's shoulder. His jacket had that loud material that rustled a lot when moved. The smell of smoke stung, forcing me to arch back. I didn't want to. Daddy's shoulder was soft, and I liked hugging him.

"You stink." Like our clothes always did after we went camping. My chest clenched. "You went camping without me?" Roasted marshmallows without me? Oh, not marshmallows! If he said yes, I was going to cry. I'd have to cry.

"Of course not," he said. I couldn't quite make out his voice. The words were more of an impression on my mind rather than actual thoughts.

And he didn't sound right. It made my stomach hurt more. Had I upset him by asking?

His mouth moved-a mouth I couldn't make out. He wasn't talking to me anymore. Mom had his attention, drawn to him by the bad something in his voice too.

"...there was a little girl, just like her...I tried...I tried..."

His arms suddenly crushed me too him, but they shook worse than when he had first pick me up. But I hadn't been heavy, he told me, but did he lie to save my feelings?

"...It wasn't...her fault..."

Mom's words went high and almost squeaky, like they did when she was about to cry. I was put down on the carpet, comforted that I had at least not missed out on marshmallows, but hurting with confusion. Mom wasn't the one crying. Daddy was. Daddy didn't cry, and the hand he put to his face had stripes of black on them. Soot?

Mom led him to the bathroom. My yellow-swirl marble was stepped into the carpet in his passing.

Yet the impressions across my thoughts continued as though my father stood before me still.

 _I had only meant to burn him. He had to be burned. Burned off the face of the earth. But dear God, I had only meant for him!_


	13. Burn Me

**Didn't get to yesterday's chapter, so here it is today. I'll probably finish today's chapter this evening. We're getting there.**

Chapter 12

The cool touch of Ayako's fingers on my cheek brought me back. Phlegm seemed to have dammed up my lungs as I slept, and my fight to clear the airways shook Naru awake, which got him started.

Ayako grimaced, half amused, half pitying, at the hacking newlyweds. "Honestly, what would you two do without me?"

"Like I haven't been..." Naru started, but found speaking rather than coughing more effort than it was worth. Settling for a grumpy grunt, he gave her his back and snuggled deeper into the blankets.

Ayako looked to the ceiling, shrugging, then gestured to the tray she'd brought in. "I made you some soup. Thought you might like an update on your stalker too, _boss_."

"As long as it leaves us alone, I don't care," he said through a pillow.

I, however, accepted the warm bowl, delighting in the heat that wiggled to the shivering in my being. The first spoonfull was like a dollop of warm, though it vanished before it could hit my frozen insides, or rather, its heat became insignificant to the fire of my fever.

I phased in and out between spoonfuls. At some point, Ayako took up the spoon and started feeding me, saying something about me taking too long and staring stupidly into the distance. The headache, which had retreated from the onslaught of sleep, had returned in force by the time she took the bowl away. I bent over, groaning. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so awful or had a sickness come on so quick. Didn't it start with a few days of coughing.

"It didn't take Yasu too long to find something," Ayako said. "It wasn't long into their relationship that your mom noticed your dad doing some odd things out of the blue for no reason. He told her it was because of some dreams he had that sometimes came true, so he was just playing it cautious. He's jumped to the end, though, in the days following his death, hoping to get to the chase. The rain isn't letting up, and whatever is out there seems to be getting stronger. There's another crack in the window."

The bed creaked as Naru twisted. "It's midday, ghosts don't get stronger."

"Newsflash, sicky, it's six in the evening. Night's coming on."

He scowled, glanced up at the window (for some reason he didn't keep a clock by his bedside), and twisted back to his cocoon.

Something jerked urgently against my breastbone. "He was involved in a fire," I told her, my voice only a step shy of heavy smoker and Vader. "And I think he might have meant it. There was a man he had meant to burn, and a girl he hadn't meant to."

Ayako flinched. "Your dad murdered people?"

I jumped too, blinking at her in groggy alarm. "What?"

"Well, when you say 'burn' I'm assuming he didn't just put a match to their toes."

I coughed, and the effort to push the air up and out just seemed to fill in my skull with a painful, thumping pressure. I got the image of my head exploding while I coughed.

"Burn off the face of the earth," I gasped. "Burned away."

Ayako watched me struggle to breathe normally again with pinched eyebrows and pale lips. "Lord...you seemed fine at your wedding. Well, fast coming means fast going. Give it a day and you should get better, so just lay back down, kay? Oy, Naru, soup."

"Just leave it."

"Oh no, then you'll just fall back asleep. Don't make me feed you like a baby." Never mind the fact that she had already done that for me and hadn't made a big deal out of it.

But he must have thought nothing of my dignity compared to his, as he sat right up, a glare set to maim and cheeks flushed.

"Give me the bowl."

"Wow, fevers make you even more of a grouch." But she gave it to him.

"It's been more than just a fever," I said from my pillow, watching the proceedings with my hands folded above my stomach. "Could you bring me one of my books to read or my laptop? I don't really feel like sleeping."

"Sure," said Ayako, smiling at me as she never would to Naru. She took my bowl and left to return with my laptop, one of my true crime mystery novels, and a still rather pale Yasu in tow. He held what I recognized to be the last volume of my mother's journals.

"I got info, boss."

Naru, who had sat up so he could eat his soup hunched over like Sméagol straightened like an old man trying to show off a much younger man. "Well?"

"What Mai told Ayako fills in some gaps of what I just read. Three days before her father dies, he comes home late from a job smelling of fire and babbling about a woman who had come to him in a dream begging him for help to save her daughter, saying she was going to be eaten like she had been. He'd gone where she had shown and accidentally burned a girl in the process-but it's unclear whether or not that was the daughter she spoke of or...it's rather muddled. But he fell sort of ill afterwards, and every time he'd sleep he'd wake up afraid of being eaten, or another girl being eaten, he was unclear as to who."

I could just see that everyone was thinking the same thing: that fit me to a T. But, since I was miserable enough to believe I was going to die of the common flue anyways, I wasn't too impressed. For some reason, I felt assured that I would be okay, which was a stark contrast to what I had been that same morning.

"What about you, boss?" asked Yasu. "Having any dreams?"

Naru, who had just put the spoon in his mouth, swallowed, and gave Yasu a dry look.

"I'll take that as a no," said Yasu, pushing up the rim of his glasses. "Anyways, the day before he dies he leaves the house fearing something is after him and might hurt Mai and her mother in the process. It sounds like it may be the man he killed, or tried to kill. The man who ate the woman. Almost twenty-four hours later he is found drowned in the river a few miles from home."

A chill prickled up my spine, spreading lines of ice into my aching head. But they weren't lines, they were sounds, words. My vision blurred, and my hands that had just received my laptop and had been opening it went numb. I couldn't see the computer.

"Stay out of the water..." I whispered.

Either they didn't hear me, or didn't know what to make of it, as Yasu continued with, "It doesn't sound like any real investigation was made into the matter, as the fire had burned out before anyone could get to it and the shack was so old it wasn't believed that anyone could have lived in it. Also, no one drew the connection between Mai's father's disappearance and consequential death to the fire that was a hundred miles or so apart; one being in the country and the other in a rather shady neighborhood of Tokyo anyways. And it doesn't sound like Mai's mother pushed them to either out of fear of finding out that her husband really had murdered a family." He opened up the journal and glanced through it. "Though I haven't found anything yet to indicate whatever went after her father went after her mother, and it seems strange that it would be coming after Mai now. How did your mother die, Mai?"

"Car accident," said Naru, as I didn't answer quick enough. I still felt strange and fuzzed. The laptop's screen went dark, having fallen asleep from my inactive fingers.

"Yeah, that's no drowning," said Ayako, who had leaned up against a wall. "And so far this thing seems to have an affinity for water."

"That's assuming that we're dealing with the same thing that killed Mai's father," said Yasu. "The doctor's labeled it a suicide. Said he jumped from a bridge and must have just been overwhelmed by the current. But, I agree, there are just a bit too many coincidences, and Mai's dreams have never been wrong yet."

"Mai said it wants to eat her," said Naru. "Her father said the same thing. I think we can make the assumption for now."

Another icy pinpricked ran up my spine. My jaw dropped open of its own accord.

"Burn him," I breathed.

"What was that?" asked Ayako.

"Burn him off the face of the earth." They weren't my words, but the alarm in me was calmed by the same something that assured me I'd be okay. "Stay out of the water. Burn. Fire." Sleepy.

"You're not making any sense," said Ayako, frowning.

Naru suddenly clutched my arm and shook it. "Mai, are you with us? Come on, shake it off."

I tried, but I just sunk deeper. So sleepy. I lost awareness of the laptop on my lap. My surroundings blurred into its main colors: the gray of the room, Ayako's red hair, the black splash which was Yasu.

Then a great upheaval flushed through me, like the action of throwing up. I even bowed over, every muscle in my body cringing to expel something, quivering with rejection.

But out came words instead, and I recognized a horror that was not mine.

" _He ate his lover, raped his daughter, sired his grand-daughter. He was going to eat them to_."

"Aw, hell," said Yasu.

"Takigawa!" Naru's voice came to me from a distance.

"He can't do possessions!" Ayako.

" _He must eat. He's going to eat her. Swallow her whole. Burn him. Burn ME!"_

And I was screaming, clutching my throbbing head fit to burst. I was colder than ever before, and something crashed onto the floor.

Because I didn't know the hand that touched my spine. The smell of smoke burned my nose and aggravated my raw lungs, but I couldn't stop screaming to breathe. His arms shook as they held me. I thought they would drop me.

"BURN ME! BURN ME! Stayoutofthewater-BURN ME!"


	14. The Shack

**A toddler is a person who guilt trips you for not letting them go pee with you. Bathroom time is not alone time.**

Chapter 13

I remembered the trail that I walked on. How could I have forgotten it after being lost on it with Naru for the better part of a day?

But instead of going on and on into the autumn colors, it faded into a clearing of turned soil. Dried stalks of some vegetable stuck up from the ground, and dots of winter vegetables decorated the corners with green. A little girl watched me among the trees, her legs bowed inward and swathed in her own long, black hair.

 _Is it her?_ I wondered, but instantly I knew that it wasn't. It was the same intuition that had lead me many times before in cases I had no place being in.

In the middle of the man-made clearing, I saw the shack-or tiny, little home. It looked like it could have been one of the late survivors of the feudal era. A woman swathed in that same, long black hair was slumped over her knees on the edge of the porch, only her pale legs speckled with dirt and a long hoe leaning next to her to say what she had been doing. Only a few dirty carrots sat at her feet. She looked to have given up half way through her daily task.

As I drew nearer, she sat up, slowly and methodically, as though in some pain and desperate to move cautiously. The pale round face that poked through couldn't have been much older than seventeen or eighteen.

Her dark eyes looked through me, at first, then widened in disbelief.

 _That is her,_ I thought with a surety. _The one that woman says will be eaten._

The world cramped about me, shifting, changing, upheaving till the sky turned black and the shack was suddenly in flames. The horrid death throws of a man screaming as he burned pierced the air, lancing my spine with how familiar it sounded to when I'd heard a pig once that had its slaughter botched.

The woman from before stood next to me, just watching, no longer surprised by my presence. She looked more like a ghost than ever, in her worn, pale yukata and bare feet. She could have been the spirit who had come to me in my dreams.

And then, as the man's screams faded, a little cry could be heard. A child.

She transformed. The ghost vanished, and something with wings flung itself into the flames, black hair flung out behind her like crow feathers. I started running towards that stupid hoe, which had fallen on the ground, and started shoveling dirt at the fire. The river was too far away. Cursing every god I'd ever known, I dropped the hoe and started flinging out dirt with my hands.

It was pointless. It had always been pointless. The shack was old, tinder, really, and collapsed within moments, both girls inside.

I saw the man's face, dripping with blood as he bit into some unknown meat. He wasn't ugly, merely plain, like any other face you'd meet on the street. But he had such long arms.

Then I was back. The shack was still on fire, it hadn't fallen in yet. The young woman, the daughter, had just run in to save her baby.

Except, instead of going for the hoe, I went in as well.

Fire. Burning.

I was outside again, transported by some unseen will.

"NO!" The word tore through my throat with a vehemence from my very soul, and ran in again.

But the fire wouldn't touch me. Even as I watched myself burn, I knew I didn't. I could see the woman I had tried so hard to save curled around her five year old daughter-the poor product of her father's rape. A mother wouldn't care. She had told her to go down to the river and wait for her, but apparently she hadn't. But, then, I should know better than anyone about the intuition of a child that something was wrong.

Next I saw my own face-or rather, my face as a child through my father's eyes, wrinkling my nose at my smell. Then I was seeing my smaller self again, watching me, or my father, with eyes big enough to swallow the world, as though I could see his guilt.

And then I was in the fire again.

And then there was me, a little girl, laughing and walking down that same path I had just taken to reach the shack. Except, I wasn't little anymore, and I wasn't alone. A young, handsome man with cool eyes and a gentle smile led me, hand in hand.

 _You see me..._

I saw myself again, except this time I was dressed in the yukata I had gotten at the spa, sitting as the black haired young woman had on her porch, with my legs hanging over and my head to my knees, some dirty carrots at my feet.

 _Burn him...Burn me..._

The same young man stepped out of shack-Naru-also dressed in the spa yukata. He put a hand on my shoulder and I straightened up.

And then the shack was on fire again, lighting up the night with amber, the daylight and blue sky flicked off like a switch. I watch as I ran towards a burning shack, my hands held out for the flames. I watched, and I followed after myself, the up heaving, vomit like reaction running through my body.

Except, as I ran into the fire this time, screaming that pig-like noise of suffering just as I had heard the other man make, it wasn't just cold flames I met. A dark, long limbed, slim creature stood waiting for me, their head seemingly bowed down as though tired, just as the young girl had rested her head on her knees.

But there was no head. Just a torso, gaping open like a big maw.

 _I'm in hell_ , I thought to myself, watching the maw grow closer, the flames charring my flesh-no, my father's flesh.


	15. Jumping for Answers

**Alright, I think that's all I have in me today. *stretches* Now to do something fun with my three-year-old.**

Chapter 14

With a shuddering gasp, I opened my eyes. Cold sweat covered my body and faces, familiar faces, circled my view. The ceiling was criss-crossed with modern lights hung on curved, black bars. Naru's apartment. No. Home. My living room.

Lin took his fingers off my forehead. I could smell the incense and rosin on his fingers, like the scent of an old violin.

The others breathed a collective sigh of relief, which turned to a cough on Naru's part.

It was short lived, as familiar, heavy smack thudded on the window, followed by another tink of cracking glass.

"Shit, this never ends!" Takigawa jumped up to his feet and ran to the windows, moving his hands into the sign of the Immoveable One.

"So it really was her dad," said Yasu. A thin film of sweat had collected over his upper lip. "Lin couldn't have cast out the spirit unless it wasn't. Good thing I wrote down his birthday, eh?"

Ayako gave a disgusted harrumph. "Some father."

I put a hand to my face. It shook horribly, almost not making it and more like dropping on my face then being put to it. "This possession thing's getting real old." Oh gal, my voice sounded worse than ever. Had I really screamed it out?

"Welcome to Masako and Gene's world," said Naru, falling back out of my vision with a huff.

"They channeled spirits, not got possessed by them," said Yasu. "I thought there was a difference."

"There is," said Lin lowly. "But Mai hasn't had the training, while Masako has. Untrained mediums of Mai's and Masako's level of power are a danger to themselves."

"Then why hasn't she been trained?" Ayako almost screeched, looking directly at Naru as though he were my father figure or something.

Naru let out a heavy sigh. "Can we focus on the thing about to break through my window?"

As though to punctuate his statement, another invisible smack echoed through the room and Takigawa started up his chant. The low thrum of his voice soothed me, familiar. The sound of defense and safety. He threw up a set of blade like fingers to the glass.

I tried to sit up, only getting to my elbows before my arms seized up. Ayako quickly ran to my aid and got me upright, to which I thanked her for with a smile. I could still smell smoke, and as I looked towards Naru I caught sight of black streaks on the counter and ceiling. He followed my gaze and answered my unasked question.

"Fire," he said. "Seems your dad has an affinity for it."

"Why is this all happening now?" Yasu asked, sitting back to reopen another of my mother's journals in his hands. "Why would whatever is out there come at Mai now? Or why would her dad suddenly be in the picture?"

"The two spirits are obviously tied to one another," said Naru. "He killed the man trying to save the creatures daughters and accidentally burned his daughters. Same guy's probably back for revenge on both accounts, whether if that's at Mai directly or-"

"He wants to eat me," I cut in, though my whisper wasn't very effective. I coughed to try and clear my throat, then regretted it. Ugh, pain. This was all getting so very, very old. Naru's idea of retirement on my part wasn't sounding so bad anymore.

Naru gave his impressive frown, the one that folded V's into all parts of his face. "Is that all he wants to do? Why you?"

"I don't know," I rasped. "But my dad is tortured by his guilt. He kept replaying the scene over and over of when the...the young woman realized her daughter was in the house and ran in and he couldn't save them. And then, for some reason, he connected me with them." I coughed. My voice was dying out. "Water?"

Ayako nodded and stood. As she made her way to the kitchen, I tried to continue, only to be interrupted by Takigawa's chant reaching a loud climax and a weird squelch coming from the window. Still, only water could be seen coursing down the glass in streams and rivulets. Takigawa exhaled loudly and slumped down to the floor, legs crossed and head shaking.

I wondered what eating people or getting burned alive had to do with water. Why was the man my father killed connected to the water?

And why did he choose to eat his wife in the first place? Had they been starving?

I accepted the glass of water Ayako handed to me, hesitated a bit before drinking it. It wasn't like I was going to drown in a cup of water or summon the beast to me with it, right? I'd drunk the soup and tea just fine.

They still waited on me to speak when I lowered it.

"I think that path we got lost on, back at the resort, either led to the cabin or looked a lot like it." I turned to Yasu. "Do you know where this fire was?"

"I guess you could say it was close to the resort," he said, tapping the bottom of his chin with his thumb. "But it's on the other side of the mountain. At least, I think so. The newspaper article she quoted wasn't exactly clear."

"But I saw me and Naru," I said, my thinking still sluggish. I did my best to describe everything I saw and my impressions, broken up with sips of water and coughing. At the end, however, I couldn't even understand the words I was speaking. No one, from Lin to Takigawa, seemed to have a clue what to take from it. Though it helped the whole story of 'dude goes into mountain to kill cannibal' story, it didn't begin to tell us why all this was happening now...or what to do about it.

"Can't we just hunt down the name of this dude and have Lin exorcise him?" Ayako asked. "That being said, what's your problem, Monk?"

"You think I haven't tried?" said Monk, more than a little offended. "It's taking all I got just to keep the wards up against him. Thing's like nothing I've ever felt!"

"I don't think it's a mere spirit anymore," said Naru, gazing out at the rain as he pulled up a knee and draped his arm over it. "I don't think it's Mai's father, at least. Guilt couldn't do this much to a man, but there's a chance, with the spirit's connection, that it's possible it isn't helping our situation either. That thing's activity rises and suddenly Mai's possessed? It can't be a coincidence."

"You two were wearing the resorts yukatas," said Yasu slowly. "And the cabin could be said to be semi-close to the resort. Could it just be proximity?"

Naru didn't say anything, eyes narrowed in thought. It felt like it had been forever since I'd seen Naru in his serious thinking mood, and I couldn't help but appreciate the nice profile he made. It was a nice reminder, through this horrible time, that at least he was still mine.

Ayako started laughing. "Hey Naru, Mai looks like she's going to pounce you."

I flinched and shrunk back, horrified. Naru's head turned just enough to give Ayako a droll look, then his eyes widened.

"Sex," he said.

Yasu and Ayako started snickering like middle school boys, and Takigawa let out a few loud barks of surprised laughter from his seat against the window. Lin was unamused.

So was Naru. "Will you lot grow up? I can't believe I forgot about something so big, especially after being able to use my PK so well."

Lin flinched and scowled, beginning to swell up.

"What does your PK have to do with any of this?" asked Ayako, still smirking.

"There's considered, in most spiritual and paranormal research, to be an elementary protection on virgins, particularly virgin girls."

Now Lin's eyes were widening as well. "Something so simple...?"

"Why not?" Naru's eyes had got bright, his usual arrogant smirk falling into place. "The man festered in his own immorality, robbing even his own daughters of that protection. Only makes sense that Mai's own virginity would be especially strong against him. Then there's the father's blessing theorum, where a woman with a dead father as a spiritualist is protected in spiritual senses until she marries. Then the spirit of said father is said to 'give up the mantle' to the husband. That could be in place as well. Mai's father has already proven to have something of the same spiritual potential as Mai. Virginity is thought to be natures natural spiritual protection to the, uh, weaker sex before she can have a man to protect her. That being said, in some cultures it counts for both sexes."

"I don't see what this has to do with your PK," said Ayako.

"I don't want to know how you found out," said Lin, mouth thin.

"Oh, please," Naru dropped his hands and pushed himself up. "Mai's father seeing me coming out of that guys shack in Mai's dream signifies he sees me as a potential threat, especially since..." he paused, catching himself, probably because of Yasu's lewd smile and Ayako's knowing grin. His face flushed and he turned away. "Look, it makes sense. All this started happening after that night. Mai even had her dream...after. I think that monster was finally able to find her because of that lift of protection and the turning of her father's spirit."

I wanted to hide my face in the couch for Naru's sake. Also because it sounded really nice all of a sudden. I was sick as a cow and had just been possessed and forced to relive hell, after all, it wasn't like I was perky energetic sunshine.

"Okay, so back to my question." Ayako folded her arms and went back to serious. "Why can't we hunt down his name?"

"The man and his family lived in a shack no one knew about," said Yasu. "And when he and his daughters all die in a fire, no one notices? Where do you suggest we start looking for a name going off of that? There probably wasn't even any records of the poor girls in the first place, with how twisted up the guys got to be to think eating his wife is a good idea..." he screwed up his face. "Or even want to. Crap, why would you even want to? Was it just a bad winter or something?"

"I think, " said Lin gravely, giving Naru a significant look. "We could be dealing with something from the Hēisè Bencao gangmu "

Takigawa made a funny little squawking noise. "Wait, the Compendium? I thought that was a book on medicine!"

I had managed to scoot myself over the space between me and the couch and squashed my face to it. It was nice. I couldn't breathe through the leather, but it was nice.

Naru, who was leaning against said couch while sitting on the floor, reached over and started rubbing my back lightly with his fingernails. It was blissfully mind-numbing.

"It's a rumored dark half of the book dedicated to using human flesh for black magic, rather than for healing. There were records of the book, but no copies found of the book itself. It's not a far stretch, but I've heard of something about eating the flesh of a lover for it—"

"Can we skip over the details?" Takigawa's voice sounded strained. "The later it gets, the harder it is to hold this thing off. How do we get rid of it?"

A silenced followed. I had to turn my head to breathe and managed a view of Naru's steady gaze on someone, waiting.

Then, I heard Lin, more grave than I had ever heard him.

"I don't know. And even if it was from the Black Compendium, I've never read it." He sighed. "That's too far of a stretch, Naru. There is no real evidence. None at all. We really have no idea."


	16. Do Not Use Elevator in Case of Fire

**Yeah, I said I would finish Slim last week. But I was a loser and started another story. I got really excited about it. Unfortunately, it is not a Ghost Hunt fanfiction. It's not even a fanfiction. But the point is...I am repenting of my grievous sin and will end Slim this week! Yesssshhhh. The end is coming!**

 **Thank you so much for your continued support.**

Chapter 15

Naru didn't take that as an answer. He kept Yasu reading through my mother's journals and got out his laptop. He put Ayako to work on warding magic as well, and he had Lin call up his father. It was the first time I had ever seen Naru lower his pride enough to ask his father for help.

Unfortunately, it became apparent once Lin pulled out his phone that there would be no calling anyone. The laptop didn't seem to want to work right either.

"There's too much spiritual interference," said Lin.

"Do you think maybe we should leave?" asked Ayako. "Maybe we could find sacred ground-somewhere with trees."

"We may have to," said Naru grimly. "But first, is there any way to ward the spiritual magic so that..."

I was having a difficult time following. Or, rather, I found it difficult to care. I was just too sleepy, too achy, too heavy, too sick. Not to mention I hit a cough attack around there. I curled up in the blanket, but the chill didn't leave. A thin layer of sweat over my skin didn't help, and I could taste salt among the phlegm of my cough.

Naru would figure this out, right? He always did.

I drifted in a strange doze where I heard everything that was going about me, but I didn't comprehend it. Occasionally a fox fire would drift across the darkness of my closed eyelids, like an afterimage after staring at something bright.

I missed Gene. What I wouldn't give to dream of him one more time.

I bobbed up to the surface of consciousness when strong arms scooped underneath me and I smelled the smoky incense scent of Lin.

"You don't look too good either," his chest rumbled.

"I'll be fine," said Naru, sounding a bit wry. "I don't need to be carried."

I moved to say I could walk too, but couldn't find the motivation to move from my weary half-sleep. Not to mention my head still pounded out death threats.

"Man, she's practically glowing," I heard Yasu say, tone worried. "This is a pretty bad fever for something that came on in just a day. Did she show any symptoms beforehand?"

"Besides having several traumatic episodes that would knock anyone out on their own?" said Ayako. "Add hypothermia in it-woa! Naru!"

"I'm fine."

"Well let me at least give you a shoulder or something."

"I'm fine, just a bit dizzy."

"Just take my damn shoulder."

I smiled to myself. Good Ayako. Take care of my idiot.

Lin started walking. I heard someone open the door and a waft of cool air brushed over me, sending a renewed vigor to my shaking.

And with it vanished the sense of safety I had been taking for granted.

Danger bells shrilled in my head and I woke with a start and a wordless wail. Lin stumbled to keep hold of me.

"It's going to eat me! Monk! Naru!"

"I'm here, Mai," Takigawa appeared at Lin's side in the hallway. "I won't let anything eat you."

Seeing his face calmed me somewhat, and I had a vague impression that I should be embarrassed.

"Mai?" croaked Naru.

"She's okay. I think she sensed us leaving the kikai barrier. We should hurry."

"Do you want to carry her?" asked Lin, and I thought I could sense a little dismay beneath Lin's urgency. Did Lin feel sorry that I didn't call out for him? That would be ridiculous.

"Best if I keep my hands free," said Takigawa. "Yasu, stay by me."

"Oh, love, you're so cute when you're worried about me."

"Jeeze, if you're going to be a creep about it..."

Ayako laughed at the two boys, but it came out brittle and strained.

The passing lights in the corridor aggravated my headache, so I closed my itching eyes and settled with curling my hands into Lin's shirt. His thudding feet reached all the way to the center of my brain and my joints. Naru's occasional honking cough made my chest constrict more than my own coughs did. I remembered how sick he had been after the ambulance had crashed and cringed. Hot, painful tears percolated beneath my eyelids.

We had just reached the elevator when a loud crash came from behind us.

"There goes the window," said Yasu. "Your landlord's going to be pissed, boss."

"Stairs," cough Naru. "We can't risk it shorting out the-"

Bing. The doors opened. Lin moved.

"Just get in," growled Ayako. "We're not running down stairs in your state."

I could hear the closing in of space and knew we had entered the elevator. Mad clicking announced someone had started hammering a button.

The hallway had grown eerily silent.

"Close door, dammit," growled Monk.

"Why are the lights going out?" squeaked Yasu.

Takigawa started chanting. The elevator gave a bing, this one sounding a bit more stretched than the first, and the doors whispered shut. The box gave a little shudder.

"Please don't tell me it's in here with us," said Ayako.

"Mai?" asked Naru.

Lin shook me, but he didn't need to. On hearing Ayako I had feverishly leaned or adjusted in that...way that felt so near to me as I was now. Changing your perspective, turning your head to view from a different angle without ever moving your head.

I opened my eyes, squinted against the flickering elevator lights, and looked around. The tears I had kept trapped rolled out like molasses. Everything seemed to shiver oddly, and I couldn't focus on anyone very well. The afterimage of a fox fire-of something burning-hazed or flickered in the corner next to the door. It throbbed with steady life in and out of my view.

"A spirit," I said, pointing towards the door, or more like flopping one hand out from Lin's shirt. My hand hit Yasu's shoulder. The elevator was a tight fit for us all. "Fire. But the eating thing isn't here."

"That must be your father," said Naru. "Maybe even stopped the thing from entering, for all we know. Or he's going to burn us all to death trying to burn the other."

"How is she seeing all this stuff so easily?" asked Ayako. "That was always Masako's strength. Mai only saw spirits on occasion."

"Maybe it's her fever?" suggested Yasu.

I closed my eyes and let myself slide back mentally. The world stopped shivering, and when I opened my eyes again the fire was gone and I could see everyone clearly again. My heart clenched at the sight of my young husband leaning against Ayako's side, his arm over her shoulder and blotches of red across his too pale cheeks. It occurred to me that he should be the one carried by Lin, not me. Lin, after all, was his guardian. Not mine.

I tried to wiggle out of his arms, but was caught in the blanket I had cocooned myself in. Lin's arms tightened around me and I couldn't remember the ground being so far away.

The lights flickered again and the elevator gave a horrible, grinding shudder. No one made a sound and Monk fell silent. Somehow, their quiet terror was louder and more piercing than if they had all screamed.

Then, all at once, the lights went out and the elevator's motor stopped. Darkness swallowed us. No emergency lights came on.

On instinct I shifted again, and non-existent blue foxfire filled my view, though it shone on nothing. I could see no one, nor the elevator.

Monk's chant continued on with more fervor, almost deafening in the tight space.

Something black, long, and slim moved on the edges of the foxfire light. I coiled against Lin, heart jumping to an all out sprint.

The elevator light flickered. The long blackness was revealed for only a blink, as though lit by a flash of lightening. Burnt, red patches marred the charred flesh, cracked like moving lava as it stretched. It's hand had been towards me.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe.

Then Monk broke into the nine cuts.

"Rin Pyou Tou Sha-"

I had never heard him do the nine cuts before. He always gave me the impression that his spiritual energy was too powerful for him to use the nine cuts safely.

"-Kai Chin Retsu Zai—"

I saw the afterimage fox fire slink away.

" _Zen!_ "

A echo of a cringe-the elevator lurched-and the lights feebly came back on. The motor started with a groan.

I couldn't see the arms anymore. The elevator was clear.

I sucked in a breath and fell into a fit of coughing. I slipped back, vision popping with stars, head throbbing. I could hear the others giving exclamations or talking, but I couldn't hear over myself. I tried to turn my head from Lin but ended up curled in on myself.

By the time the attack passed, I had fallen back to my exhausted daze, closing out the light and hiding my face against Lin's shoulder.

The next thing I knew I was being loaded into the back seat of Lin's car next to a shivering Naru. I automatically tried to caterpillar around him, mumbling my displeasure at his discomfort. I tried throwing the blanket on him as well, but couldn't seem to find where the blanket ended or began.

Naru helped, though. He found the blanket edge. So smart.

I heard rain.

 _Stay out of the water._

Yasu slid in next to me, followed by a very disgruntled Ayako. Four people to the back seat? She was saying.

Naru solved this by bringing me onto his lap. I happily complied, eager to get the chance to stop his shivering.

Yasu started laughing. "Does she even hear herself?"

Only then did I notice that I had been muttering, "warm the boy, warm the boy."

"Shut up," said Naru.

The car engine hummed. Water hushed by. Horns in the distance. Open sky. I could hear it all. But the black of my eyelids were much more welcome. Naru's lap was so comfy, even if the doors handle digging into my back wasn't. I could smell his sweat. I could feel his aching in the arms holding me beneath the blanket. His clammy heat mixed with mine. Illness had made us disgusting.

But, eased by his presence more than anything else, I ignored the foreboding thrum of rain against the windshield and slipped back, deeper than ever, into the darkness.

Rain brought me out. Rain and cold. The traffic of the city sounded far away and Naru's breathing had gone heavy and rhythmic. He had fallen asleep. Arms were lifting me up and away from him. They trembled, struggling to lift me, and the jacket they wore vissshed as the fabric rubbed against itself. So noisy.

Gasping at the cold, my eyes shot open, a protest on my tongue-

To see the side of a face I barely recognized.

My dead father was carrying me.


	17. When in Doubt, Punch It

**I really love reading all your reviews. So much fun.**

Chapter 16

If you had expected me to feel relieved or happy to see my long lost father, you'd be wrong. I had grown up without this man and I had forgotten his features enough that his face looked almost like a stranger's. It didn't help that he was taking me away from my sick husband while there was a monster on the loose.

"Put me back!" I cried. My voice came out clear and strong, and no sign of coughing threatened it.

Now that I was noticing, my head had cleared considerably too. Not encouraged by this, I craned my head over his shoulder too look back at the car just in time to see Lin open the door my father had just taken me out of. I could see my blanket clad back, the rest of me still curled in Naru's arms.

That's when I really started to panic.

"Let me go this instant!" squirming out of a man's arms should not be this difficult. It was almost as if I had shrunk, or I was the corporeal ghost and he was the solid body.

"No," he said. "Not while that thing is loose."

"Naru can take care of me just fine-he has all this time without you-"

The man holding me made an ugly sound in his throat. "He's the reason you are in this mess in the first place. Like hell am I going to leave you with him."

I hadn't been expecting that. "Excuse me? If I recall correctly, you're the reason I'm in this mess."

I got the satisfaction of making him flinch, but he kept walking. I thought I could see something similar in the way he pressed his lips and narrowed his eyes-my eyes.

Tree branches passed over me. They stretched over us, as though living things, and the bushes and trunks seemed to thicken, as though the forest reached out to embrace us. Before the trees blocked my view, I caught site of stone steps leading up to a Tora gate, which marked entrance to sacred ground. Lin had driven us to a shrine.

"If it weren't for that boy," said my father distastefully, "you would have never awakened to your powers and never have awoken the attention of Nisabe, along with several other unfriendly spirits. Him, and his blasted doppleganger."

 _Gene?_ "It isn't like ghosts existed before Naru. I would have met them eventually."

"It wasn't spirits," he said. "The doppleganger was a medium. He broke my barrier reaching out to you. How he even saw you is beyond me. But has that self-proclaimed proffesional done anything to repair the damage he has done? Has he done anything to stop the torn and wretched refuse of mankind from reaching you? No." His voice tightened with a bite. "He used you instead."

"That was my choice! I wanted to help people!" I kicked, pushing on his shoulders, but my arms could have been paper for all the good it did. "I'm not four anymore, I have my own free will!"

"A man should be able to protect what he loves no matter their choices."

I snorted. "Oh, that's rich, coming from you."

He raised smooth, dark eyebrows, and I realized they were like mine before I shaped and plucked them. "I protected you up until he came. And I was dead."

"Then why haven't you contacted me before then, hmm?"

"I was preoccupied keeping the cannibal from finding you." He sniffed. "Again, it would have worked if it wasn't for that boy, tearing away the last protection with his..." His face twisted into an ugly, pale snarl.

Branches didn't pass through us or hit us. Rather, they bent out of our way, like mirages. Rain pattered through in streaks of gray. I found it strange I could feel it at all, but I did, pattering through me like the cold fingertips of children drawing on a foggy window.

"He thinks to steal my place," my father continued, voice low as the thunder above us. "And then fail? No. You will not return. You will stay with me until your life's energy fades, then we will return to your mother."

Cold horror flooded to the tips of my fingers. My yelled protest came out as a whisper, as though I were in a bad dream.

"First, to get out of this blasted water," he finished.

"You can't do this. You can't steal my life away."

"This life is meant to learn through suffering. You have suffered more than your fair share. I think it's time to move on."

"Says who!" I cried, finally finding the volume I wanted. "Who died and made you god?"

Just then, a rippling crackle broke across the spiritual plane, like lightning without the flash. I caught glimpses of the headless spirit with its burnt, gaping body, flickering after us in twitching, glitchy strides without having to turn my head. I suppose eyes were an organ stuck to the physical plain. They were just for show in the spiritual.

My father stopped, twisted, and suddenly there was fire licking up the trees behind us. The thing made a gurgling, popping noise as it's organs-made-tongue rose. I thought they might spill out, but they hovered on the bottom lip of the maw, held back by some unseen force.

The fire struggled, though, hissing against the rain and fighting to keep hold of the damp leaves.

He made a low hiss and turned back to where he was going, except this time he ran. My spiritual legs clenched to keep from flopping with each landing of his foot.

"Please!" I screamed. "Take me back! Don't do this!"

"You're sick and spiritually weakened," he said curtly, not in the least winded by his sprint.

"Fine, forget Naru, Takigawa can protect me! He has been this whole time!"

"That's not how it works, Mai."

"Then tell me how it works so I can convince you to put me back, you chauvinistic pig!"

That made him pause. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me! All this crap about protecting me because your my dad and he's my husband-what the hell! Who's protecting you and him? Why the hell can't you just let me protect myself? Screw that, what the hell kind of parent kidnaps their full grown child from their own choices? Bad ones, that's who!"

The darkness that slipped over his eyes almost scared me into thinking I had gone too far. But he just gave a dismissive grunt.

"I showed you part of my soul, hoping you'd understand." He turned his eyes back to where he was going. "But apparently that wasn't enough."

"Then how would you feel if your dad kidnapped you from protecting mom?"

But he wasn't listening to me anymore. The forest had closed in about us tighter than before until it wasn't a forest at all, just walls of darkness, green, and flickering foxfires. I began to recognize the spiritual plain as it was whenever I first stepped into it. It made me long for Gene more than ever.

I tried a different direction, resorting to tears, which wasn't hard as they were near the surface anyways.

"Please! Daddy!"

"You'll thank me," he said.

"Tell yourself that! Like hell I will! You're doing this all for yourself!"

The green vanished completely. He was once more walking, and I couldn't remember when he had stopped running. The passing foxfires gave me the vague impression that a lot more time than I knew of was passing, and panicked alarm rose up even stronger than before, driving me wild.

I imagined Naru waiting by my beside for me to wake from a coma that I never would-

Suddenly, my flailing hands hit my dad's chest with superhuman strength. I shot from his grasp and he fell back onto his rump. I flopped across the spiritual plain, rolling to a stop some distance away from him. I blinked and I was standing. Position here was all about thought. Your surroundings were based off of perceptions, and so was yourself.

I bared my teeth at him. "You will _not!_ "

"Mai-" he started, dark eyes shimmering with fear, pleading.

"No!" I steadied my feet, limbs quivering as though they had been swallowed by heat waves. "Get the hell away from me or I swear I'll _kill you!_ "

For the first time, something I said stunned him speechless.

And in that same moment, the blue-lit dim of the spiritual plain tore open, and a long, boneless, charred arm reached through. The rib-cackling, organs-licking torso followed. It's sightless collarbones didn't even glance towards my father. It just went for me, knobbly black legs almost seeming to dance with each step.

But I was done. The image of Naru's face besides my bed burned in me like a super nova and I stared down that horrid thing with pure, righteous fury.

"You're nothing by a pathetic, sick in the head man!" I cried, almost sung, as the burning within me reached my voice and powered it to an ear-splitting volume. "I'm sick and tired of you causing problems for me! You're not even alive! I AM!"

And without thinking, I crossed the distance between us with one step, swung my arm back, and punched right toward its bared spinal cord, still and white between the flopping purple-red sacks of its lungs.

The bone snapped. It folded in half over my fist, ooze and blood spilling out into nothing.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father still kneeling on the ground, frozen in shock.

My arm that had sunken into its flesh glowed with blue light as I yanked it out.

"Get over yourself and die already!" I shouted, bringing my leg up between those pathetic, burnt excuses for limbs. It tore up the things torso like it was jelly. The torn bits of its corps froze in mid air for a moment, as though not realizing what had happened. Then, with something like a relieved sigh, it burst into blue flame and faded away, as every afterimage eventually does.

I started stomping towards the hole it had created, which shone with all the senses I had left behind. I could see the back of my eyelids, feel myself lying in something warm and soft.

"Mai..."

I almost just kept walking. I didn't see why that pathetic man deserved even a bit of my time after nearly swiping me away from my life.

But, since he was my father, and since he had essentially confessed to dedicating his afterlife to protecting me from his mistakes...

I spared a moment to look back.

He was standing right behind me. Distance, after all, was all relative.

He looked at a loss for words. He didn't glow, like I did, and thus looked pale and transparent next to me. He almost looked apologetic, but not quite.

I knew I should say 'thanks' or 'it's okay' or something forgiving. I knew I should be kind. But you couldn't lie on the spiritual plane. There was no ability for numbing white lies or cushioning words. That's partially why they say that, if you've chosen to live a horrible life, dying will send you to hell: because all the justifications and lies you use to protect yourself will be torn away.

And I could see that hell in my father's eyes. I knew that hell. It was the same place he had shown me in my visions, where he replayed over and over the death of that girl, and then the inevitable replacement of the girl with me before the house that was to burn down.

And it was that which made me finally really feel true compassion.

"It sucks when you die and can't be there as your kid grows up," I said softly. "You desperately wanted to be a part of my life...didn't you?"

He didn't need to say it. The answer was there.

"I did my best," he said. His hands grasped at his face.

"And that's all you can do, even if you hadn't died." I hesitated. "Dad...I'll be okay. Na...Oliver is a good man. I chose him. And I really can take care of myself."

But he just shook his head. I got the impression he didn't care. Made me wonder if being alone and dead for so many years made it difficult to comprehend someone else's feelings.

With nothing else to say, and since I couldn't say 'I love you' as I barely knew him, though I wished I could say the words just to put his soul at ease, I turned and stepped into the light.


	18. Heaven

**Now all I have to do is finish the epilogue tonight and this puppy is DONE! Woo!**

Chapter 17

I didn't wake up in the hospital like I had expected. Rather, I woke up in bed next to a sleeping, feverish Naru. My head didn't hurt anymore, but I was still covered in sweat, and I deduced from the fact that I was still wearing the pajamas I had put on that not much time had passed since I had fallen asleep in the car. I didn't recognize the bed we were in, though. It was smaller than Naru's and had a striped, utilitarian bed set. A large window on one wall had closed blinds over it. I tried to take a tentative sniff and thought I could catch the scent of incense beneath the stink of both mine and Naru's sick, sweaty bodies.

Cautious, I sat up, readying myself for the light headedness and nausea. It didn't come. Just as I started to think that maybe my sickness had gone away as well, a coughing fit came over me, jarring all of my various aches and pains.

Naru woke up with a start. He reached out for me, concern softening his features as no one but me would ever see, if he could help it.

I smiled and met his hand with my own.

"I'm okay," I breathed, and tears filled up my eyes. "We're okay now."

As the tears spilled out and down my cheeks, Naru raised his hand to my face and wiped them away with his thumb. He didn't ask why, seeming to just understand.

"Takigawa and Lin said the spirits left all a sudden. When you didn't wake up, I was...they told me you were alright, but I was..."

I put my hand over his on my face and turned to nuzzle it. "I know, love. I know. I'm sorry." I bit my lip, holding back a sob. I was so, so sorry. For not protecting myself right, for worrying him, for being a gateway to the utter destruction of his heart.

He made soft shushing sounds and sat up too so as to fold me into his arms. I gave a wobbly laugh through a sob.

"After all that crap you spout about not being good at comforting."

"I learn from the best." He kissed the side of my head. "But, since you seem so disturbed by my out of character actions: we stink."

That jerked another laugh from me, all burbly and ending with a cough, which got him coughing and laughing too. What a wonderful way to spend a honeymoon.

"Wanna take a shower?" I asked.

"With you? I'd rather not. It wouldn't be relaxing in the least."

"Oh come on, doesn't feeling like crap enough to keep your-"

"Nope. We're not going there."

"Seriously? I just had a super emotional experience and-"

"Fine, whatever, I'll take a shower with you." He pushed me away from him, looking half exasperated, half amused. "Got to make everything into a soap opera, don't you?"

Instead of barfing out the whole abandoning my dad and punching out a gross Silent Hill's monster with my bare fist episode, I just smiled and sniffed.

"Something like that."


	19. Epilogue

Epilogue

About three months later I was typing out a report of one of Naru's most recent investigations in the office, when he came out sipping a cup of tea I had just made him and reading something in a manila folder.

"Add this to the Greenhouse case," he said, closing it with a thumb and dropping it on the desk.

Since I was in the middle of a sentence, I just nodded. Now that I was off of field work (for the most part), Naru had released all the office work he had been keeping from me to my responsibility in an attempt to help me not feel left out. He also asked me to look over all the footage and sound records for 'a second opinion,' but I was getting the increasing impression that he was paranoid that I'd force my way into a case in order to escape a particularly bad episode of cabin fever.

And don't even mention whenever I get one of 'those' dreams while he's on a case and I'm back home. This weird spiritual connection we have both fascinates and terrifies him. Not that he'd ever admit that he freaks out inside whenever he hears that his cases somehow reach me all the way back in our safe little apartment. They weren't even all that bad. Just a lost little girl who wanted to tell her mom sorry for a fight they'd had before she died and a rather confused old man who didn't know he was dead.

Frankly, the one who was most bemused to how well I was adapting to 'office work and housewife' life was me. I couldn't believe how much I had to do, even more than before. Not to mention a little something on the side I had yet to reveal to Naru...

When I looked up from the computer screen to take the folder, Naru was still there, watching me.

"What?" I asked.

"I am legally and socially allowed to stare at my wife whenever I want," he said over the rim of his mug before taking a sip.

"Creep. What do you really want?"

"I've managed to set up appointment with a tutor of Ms. Hara's recommendation Wednesday evening. And lavender is a very nice color for your skin."

I groaned and leaned my elbow on the desk to rub my forefinger and thumb over my eyes. "Sure thing, boss."

"Also..." he hesitated.

I stopped rubbing my eyes long enough to glance up at him, and found his face to be pensive.

"What?"

"About that 'project' you said you're working on while I was gone last month...you didn't say it was with my mother. Or that she was funding it."

I let loose a bark of laughter-or more like a cackle-that made Naru jump.

"Oh, we're just deciding how to best milk your family jewels for super sperm-I'm aiming for triplets."

I laughed even harder when he almost dropped his mug. His following show of distaste at my teasing didn't help. It was adorable.

"Why can't I get a straight answer out of you anymore?"

"Because this is way more fun." But I considered telling him as I calmed down. It wasn't like I was trying to keep it a secret from him. I just knew how sensitive he got when the media got involved, but we were married, after all. And I had already agreed with Luella that changing all the names would be for the best.

I cleared my throat. "I'm writing a book."

His eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"A series of books, actually. You're mom is helping me self-publish them." And just so he didn't think otherwise. "I was all for doing it the traditional route, querying editors and all, but when I shared my idea with her she just sort of jumped on me, you know?"

He snorted. "Like she does on everything else?" He put his cup down, all seriousness. "Why haven't you told me until now?" Then, because he's such a genius, it dawned on him. The exact scowl I knew he'd have came into place. "You're not."

"I so am."

Scowl deepens. "Mai-"

"Oh, come on! I changed all the names and I'm even using a pen name, okay? So calm your tits."

"These are legitimate, scientific observations and facts. By making fiction out of it you're giving people the invitation to continue in their ignorance! Do you think I liked all those years teaching you elementary facts that even children know?"

I wanted to get offended. But the years I had known him had taught me that he didn't mean to be a rude ass, and that he, like anyone else, often said stuff he didn't mean...I got offended anyways.

"Well, jee, sorry for not being a complete ghost nerd like you. At least I had enough practice socially to get our relationship off the ground. We wouldn't even be married if we'd depended on your oh-so-aggressive way of winning the girl."

That made him back off. He knew fire when he smelled it. For a long moment we glared coolly at each other. We'd had enough of these spats to understand what was going on. He had said something stupid. I had overreacted. Cheerleaders were more often skinny than not. Ayako and Takigawa would probably move back their wedding date again.

So, he shook a hand through his hair and sighed.

"Since I can tell when my opinion is wanted..."

Oh, wow, now that was a new blow.

"It isn't that," I said. "There really is nothing to worry about. And they help me feel like I'm making use of all my experience, you know?" When he picked up his cup and started heading back to his office, I started to actually panic. "Fiction helps people to accept the truth first, doesn't it? I mean, how often has fairytales or myths helped you in your investigations? The line between truth and fiction is hard to find, right?" He stepped through his open door. I pushed myself to my feet. "Wait! Naru!"

"Calm down. I'm just getting back to work."

"Don't give me that, you're upset with me!"

"Well, I like to be involved with your life and interests."

That got me all confused. "I thought you were mad about me writing books based off the cases?"

"I am. You're writing them without consulting me for what I think. Also, yes, I am a bit insulted by your immature outburst, but then I was an idiot to insult you, so there we go."

I followed him into his office like a sad ghost anyways, pandering for forgiveness. He had just sat in his chair and gave me a look one would give to a child whimpering over the fact that the dinosaur head didn't open big enough to bite the Lego man's head off.

"Alright, alright. Please involve me with your life more," he said, as though giving me permission rather than acquiescing to the plea that he needed to communicate his emotional needs better after we had any sort of confrontation. "And don't jump things on me."

"Jump things on you?"

"Like act like you're keeping it a secret and then land it on me out of the blue-surprise me, I guess I'm saying. It unsettles me and causes…" he waved a vague hand between us while not looking at me.

"Oh…so I can write the books?"

"I'm inferring you mean to ask if you can write about me?" He sighed and pinched his nose. "Fine. Not like you need my permission."

"True…"

He went back to whatever he was reading up on the computer and I watched him for a minute or so. Despite everything I had said, I had really hated the few days he was gone investigating some old house without me. Naru wasn't the only one having a hard time communicating their emotional needs.

But there wasn't much I can do about that now, right? It was what we both wanted…or, at least, I could take petty revenge on him for not having the same vulnerabilities as I did to spirits. Though we had agreed that it was only till I gained the proper training that I was taking a hiatus—but what I was about to throw on his desk would change that. I was hoping my show of displeasure at his setting an appointment up with a trainer for me would make him ask, but since he failed that test…

I pulled a plastic stick out of my pocket and dropped it next to his hand. Then ran.

I had made it out into the hallway before he let out an angry, "Mai Taniyama Davis!"

I cackled all the way down the street to the ice cream shop, where I planned on getting some chocolate deliciousness before heading back.

Perhaps my first response of super sperm to his question wasn't entirely a joke. But it wasn't like I had needed any fertility advice in the first place.


	20. Sequel Alert! Boon

Since this seemed to be an okay thing to do, here's an update to let you all know that the sequel for Slim, 'Boon,' is now out! :D Just in case, you know, you were interested...

x.x meep.


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